The changing of the guard at Melbourne will continue this Sunday when veterans Adem Yze and Jeff White play their final games for the club.

The pair join former skipper and games record holder David Neitz, long-serving coach Neale Daniher, not to mention two CEOs, as prominent figures to part ways with the Demons in the past 14 months.

Only two players will have played more games for the Demons than Yze, whose match against Richmond at the MCG will be his 271st, while White, who played 32 games at Fremantle, is seventh on the club's games record list.

But the door has not entirely shut on their AFL careers. Both players will nominate for the draft, though Yze, 31 next month, acknowledged he had 'probably only half a percent' chance of finding a new home.

A 31-year-old ruckman who feels he was squeezed out by the club's youth policy, White, however, has more cause for optimism for stretching his league career into a 14th season.

While no club has publicly staked an interest in White, the athletic ruckman believed he had something to offer at the highest level.

"From a personal point of view I still feel I've got some time left," he said.

"I'm not hanging my hat on getting a spot on an AFL club next year but I'll definitely put my hand up to say my mind feels good, my body feels good, I want to continue playing."

If not picked up, White and Yze will both continue playing in the VFL or in another lower-grade competition, though it would not surprise to see the latter embark on a coaching career once his playing days were over.

"I've really enjoyed the development side of the game so I want to help the younger players in whatever club I go to," Yze said.

"I really enjoy doing that in the last few years with our younger blokes here. I'll look to do that as well next year."

At their best, both Yze and White were integral members to the Demons, who reached six finals series in nine years before the wheels fell off in 2007.

Yze will be remembered in the decades to come as the man who nearly played the most consecutive matches ever, falling 18 short of equalling Jim Stynes' record of 244, though he said the record became more of a distraction the nearer he came to breaking it.

For Bailey, who has spent much of his career coaching against the departing pair, it will be Yze's on-field brilliance which remained in the coach's mind.

"The difficulty in coaching Ooze was he could do the absolutely spectacular thing when you least expected him to do it and he'd do something. He just had that," he said.

"There's not too many players in the AFL who can do that often."

"Whether that's innate or he has learnt hat over the journey it's one of those parts of Adem you'd love to be able to take out of his brain and put in someone else's, because he does have that special quality."

Bailey said White, who at 195cm was short for a ruckman, was difficult to coach against because of his 'great leap' and his mobility.

"My memory goes back the year before the circle (which was introduced in 2005) where he'd come off the long run and you were just excited to see