1998 shows better times might be ahead for your club

 If anyone has reached the end of the season wondering when the year after year of pain and suffering will ever end for their club, it might be worth giving the final league table of the 1997-98 Division three season a view for evidence that there might just be one day at the end of the tunnel.

Remarkably the bottom six clubs that season were Swansea, Cardiff, Hull, Brighton and Doncaster. Of those six three will be playing Premier League football next season, another could join them in the form of Brighton and whilst Doncaster can't quite match that a place in footballs second tier is a huge contrast from playing non-league football.

That information alone should highlight to any long suffering football fan that there is every chance that the good times will one day come back around, after all had you suggested to any Hull, Cardiff or Swansea fan that they would be playing top flight football in 15 years time you would have been met with utter bemusement. Yes 15 years is a long time but that shouldn't hide the fact of how incredible the rises of these clubs has been, whilst several of the clubs mentioned didn't actually begin their ascent to better things until a good few years after that season.

Of course you need a fair share of luck to make such strides and you might well argue that it won't happen to your club but you can bet your bottom dollar that such a response would have been given by the fans of these now successful clubs at the time of their struggles. Several of these clubs have had financial investment which undoubtedly has been a key factor in their rie but then during their perils several were on the verge of financial meltdown which again shows how different things can become.

So for fans of clubs like Portsmouth, Coventry, Plymouth, Preston and Oldham to name a few, things might look like they are heading in an unstoppable downward spiral of no return, yet history has shown us that things do get better no matter what. Football is an incredibly strange game and in many ways it is true that anything can happen, so with that in mind fans should never give up hope of the seemingly inevitable doom and gloom cast on their club one day clearing to bring a bright new future.

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