As he assumed the Melbourne presidency, Jim Stynes wept while speaking of his dream of watching the Demons with his grandchildren.

The sad reality is that it’s unlikely to happen.

After eradicating the AFL club’s debt and unifying what had been a disjointed and almost farcical club, Stynes stood down as its president on Wednesday to focus on his battle with cancer.

He took over the ailing club in 2008, a year before he was diagnosed with cancer, which spread from his back to other parts of his body, including his brain.

Ailing himself for the last two-and-a-half years, he continued his passionate fight to rescue Melbourne which was last on the ladder, in debt to the tune of $5 million and even facing extinction when he took over.

He resisted moves to relocate the club, shored up the MCG as its home ground, restored relations with the MCC, found a permanent training and administrative base and injected a positive spirit into a dispirited club.

On-field, the progress has been slower, but Stynes has laid the foundations. It’s now up to the players and coaches to honour a commitment which had unlikely origins.

The Irishman ended up in Australia in 1984 after answering an ad placed by Melbourne in a Dublin paper calling on bold Gaelic footballers with a sense of adventure.

More than two decades later, he answered the club’s call again.

But this time it wasn’t a strange club in a foreign land playing an odd game. It was his cherished club which had adopted him and which he had adopted.

Over 12 years and 264 games, four club best and fairest awards, a Brownlow medal, regular All Australian selection and countless displays of bravery, the skinny Dubliner had become as big a part of the Melbourne Football Club as anyone else in its 150-year history.

And 10 years after he stopped playing, when his club needed someone to take it by the scruff of the neck and lift it out of the gutter, he did just that. Just as he did for many of Victoria’s directionless youth through his charity the Reach Foundation.

His work with Reach put him on state and federal government advisory boards and has also been recognised by honours beyond football – a Medal of the Order of Australia and twice Victorian of the Year.

But cancer wasn’t enough to stop the 45-year-old’s commitment to others.

He’s had 23 tumours cut from his body, six from his brain, and was told last November he had three weeks to live.

In between surgery, even days after having tumours removed, he’d put his own issues aside to continue his pledge to turn his football club around.

He’d drag himself to training and games.

Rather than the comfort of an MCG corporate box, Stynes would regularly sit with the Demons cheer squad, frail body wrapped in a red and blue scarf and feeble voice cheering as loud as it could.

While the club tried to ease Stynes’ workload, his vice-president Don McLardy said it was a difficult task.

“He’s very hard to stop from getting up and doing things. That’s one of his greatest assets, that he keeps going when most people stop. He’s a bit hard to control sometimes,” McLardy told Fairfax Radio.

He’ll still be hard to stop, but at least now Stynes can focus a little more on himself.