Another grim anniversary has sailed by for Sheffield Wednesday: 20 years since relegation from the Premier League.
It is by some stretch now the longest period outside the top flight for what was once a footballing powerhouse of the north. It is 90 years since they were last crowned champions of England and 29 have passed since their last major trophy.
The good thing about the bad times is that they provoke fascination. There is debate and opinion and there are stories to be told. The good thing about the current mess at Hillsborough is that there was a time when it was worse.
For Wednesday there was no darker era than three seasons in the mid-70s when everything they did seemed to go wrong. When they slumped into the third tier for the first time and flirted with the drop to the fourth.
This dismal descent featured one of football's most infamous managerial dismissals when they fired Derek Dooley on Christmas Eve. Dooley had been a legendary striker, devoted to his club and destined for the top until he lost a leg while in action for the Owls.
He returned as manager in 1971, charged with reversing the club's fortunes as they wallowed in the old Division Two but there was to be no stopping the demise.
In the weeks before his sacking he had also been laid low by a virus which also took out a dozen of his players. Hillsborough was shut down as the fumigators with spray guns waded in wearing protective suits, goggles and masks.
Sheffield Wednesday, however, were sick in more ways than one. Post-Dooley they crashed into the old Division Three with a run so pathetic it is hard to fathom. They took two points and scored only two goals in 17 games after the turn of the year.
In an era of the three-day week the joke was that Wednesday didn't work on Saturdays.
Economic troubles gripped an industrial city, hooliganism was rising in football and the Owls fans were dissenting. The club were forced to curtail the hire of seat cushions by the supporters club in the North Stand because they had become handy missiles to launch at the players.
Crowds slumped below 7,000 – a midweek crowd of 6,905 for a game against Colchester in 1975/76 remains an all-time low - and the team plummeted until they escaped relegation into the fourth tier with a last-day victory against Southend in April 1976.
The fixture had been postponed until the end of the season because Hillsborough was used for an FA Cup semi-final. Once hailed as the 'Wembley of the North', it was still an impressive stadium even if it regularly staged some dreadful football.
This season represents the club's worst finishing position in its 153-year history, the nadir identified by John Dyson in his book 'Our Lowest Ebb?' and when reaching into the Wednesday community for memories he discovered great warmth amid the tales of woe.
'There is a great sense of nostalgia for that era among fans who remember it,' Dyson said. 'It was still 'real football' and the working man's game in the eyes of many. It wasn't expensive and you would be able to stand with your mates.
'If you followed Wednesday it was unrelenting misery on the pitch but they talked of the smells of Bovril and the pies and pubs, and the players and the kits and the memorable away trips to York and Southend.
'Nearly 50 years on and people who were young men at the time and probably travelling away for the first time are reaching an age where they are more reflective. Perhaps the friends and relatives people went with are no longer around.'
The nostalgia business is booming at a time when the march of modern football has been brought to a halt. Perhaps it is the manner in which they survive the crises that help to define football clubs, just as with people. Hence the interest.
Chelsea supporter and writer Tim Rolls has a new book out called 'Stamford Bridge is Falling Down' chronicling the mistakes which led to crippling debts and almost wrecked the club in the '70s. In 'Caught Beneath the Landslide' football journalist Tim Rich examines Manchester City's fall in the 1990s.
City fans were galvanised by their woes in this era just as Sheffield Wednesday have found their core support – particularly away from home – holding strong in recent seasons.
Wayne Barton's 'Too Good To Go Down' told the inside story of Manchester United's relegation in 1974 and it spawned a documentary film.
These are tales about miserable footballing times for big clubs. They have successes to celebrate but the gloomy parts are more interesting and come with a badge of honour for those who endured them.
'It denotes a certain authenticity,' said John Williams, associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester and author of several books on football, as he tackles the notion that some fans might even take solace from the bad old days.
'One of the markers of more 'authentic' fandom is that one is able to reflect on a deeper level of devotion and those circumstances when your club was not successful or fashionable, in a way in which these new 'consumer' fans simple cannot or do not want to do.
'Showing you were there when only the true believers stayed loyal is a very important part of a true fan's identity and a defence against being described as a glory-hunter or a part-timer.'
Consolation perhaps for some beleaguered Sheffield Wednesday fans as they remember it could be worse.
* Our Lowest Ebb? A New History of Sheffield Wednesday's Darkest Times by John Dyson is published by Vertical Editions
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We will bounce back.