Monday is the 11th edition of the Big Freeze, the annual fundraiser and AFL clash between Melbourne and Collingwood at the MCG.
Carlton and Essendon will have, by then, done battle the previous evening for a third year in a row. But while this is a tradition a lot newer, the Big Freeze tag for the Blues up against the Bombers is perhaps even more appropriate.
If ever there were two clubs for whom winter's chill had blown bitterly cold not just for a year or two but virtually the entirety of the current century, it's these two. If it's not misery delivered through abject failure, it's the sting of unfulfilled expectations. Again. And again.
Last year, for example, when Essendon and Carlton met the evening before the King's Birthday public holiday, the two clubs were on a rare high, jousting for second spot on the ladder.
And this time? The Blues are 13th, with just four wins from 11 games, and ready to be consumed by another round of hand-wringing, should they drop this one to a bitter foe. The Bombers, having commenced on an officially-sanctioned rebuild, are 10th, their 18-point defeat against Brisbane last week arguably a better performance than any of their six wins.
False dawns are something with which either club has become achingly familiar over the past couple of decades, but particularly the last few years.
For Carlton, that mirage came over the back half of 2023, kick-started, perhaps not coincidentally, but a bad loss in this very same fixture, which left it a dismal 15th on the ladder.
From there, the Blues got on a major roll, winning nine games straight, knocking over Sydney and Melbourne in thrilling finals victories, even leading Brisbane by five goals in a preliminary final at the Gabba.
Since then, including that narrow loss, Carlton has gone at less than 50 per cent, with a 17-19 win-loss record, widespread conjecture about whether coach Michael Voss was maximising the senior list's talent gradually having given way to the perhaps more unpalatable suggestion the list simply just isn't that good.
Essendon, in its third year under Brad Scott, meanwhile, has finally bitten the bullet and publicly acknowledged that its list was even further off the pace than Carlton's, despite a couple of mid-season mirages in Scott's first two seasons, when each time, buoyed by a favourable draw, the Dons got to the midway point with eight or more wins.
Yet far from the frenzied hyperbole which once would have surrounded such a clash given the desperation of either team to show something, anything, there's more an air of muted resignation from the supporters of either camp that a loss would just be more of the same, while victory won't be a sign of anything much, so often have the Blues and Dons flattered to deceive over the years.
And perhaps the most remarkable thing about these once-mighty clubs' downturns is how similar have been their paths to premiership irrelevancy.
As I've often joked to supporters of either club over the years, at first with comic licence but these days merely as a statement of fact, it's almost as if Carlton and Essendon have been destined to spend the 21st century joined at the hip in mediocrity.
Both ended the 2000 season as the joint premiership record-holders with 16 flags each, Essendon with an amazing 24-from-25-win season, romping away with a premiership, Carlton having won its last in 1995. But jointly, their premiership drought has now lasted 55 years, easily the longest dry spell in the history of either.
Both have since also known lows previously unthinkable. For Essendon, it's the now infamous "days without a finals win" meme, the Bombers last finals victory coming over Melbourne in 2004, six elimination final losses since then. For Carlton, it's the only five wooden spoons in the proud club's history
Both have endured major scandals (read salary cap cheating for the Blues, supplement scandal for the Dons) and consequent lengthy dark periods plunging both into massive downturn and affected every aspect of their operations. On the field, draft penalties have hit particularly hard. Off it, massive fines have compromised their financial health.
They are the furthest-reaching and most profound factors in either club's fall from grace. And yet the most ironic commonality is the entitlement which still pervades significant portions of both Carlton and Essendon's supporter bases.
It's entitlement which has changed little since either was legitimately lauded as a competition heavyweight, yet perversely, helps keep each club anchored to the past as the game has continued to change around them.
Planning and patience are bywords of successful clubs in the 21st century, and to be fair, most people involved at Carlton and Essendon have known that for some time.
Yet several times in this barren century, both the Bombers and Blues have bowed to powerful supporter group or board pressure to make changes which, while effective in a bygone era, are actually counter-productive in a contemporary football climate.
Is Carlton on the brink of another should the Blues lose on Sunday night, and the considerable number of influential forces around Ikon Park who believe their team is severely underperformed for its abilities begin marshalling their forces?
Or if Essendon's modest results this far in 2025 turn to another disappointing second half of a season, will coach Brad Scott be a sacrificial lamb and yet another attempt made to find an instant coaching saviour, simultaneously upending the long-term list plans of chief executive Craig Vozzo and list manager Matt Rosa?
That simmering discontent and resultant knee-jerk responses are a price football clubs can continue to pay when the wait for genuine success is as lengthy as it has now become for Carlton to Essendon.
It's another type of King's Birthday Big Freeze. And Sunday night's version is even more chilling in its sustained impact than is that ice bath the celebrities will be plunging into at the MCG the following afternoon.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.