If you're an AFL fan, cast your mind back 12 months and recall the lead-up to the start of the 2019 season.
As Richmond prepared to take on Carlton in the traditional season-opener, we were into a fifth or sixth month of furious debate about the potential impact of a new rule for centre bounces, and the moving back a few metres of the man on the mark at kick-ins.
At the time, they seemed significant - two rule changes which could have a dramatic impact on the way the game was played. In the end, they really didn't much, the amount of angst having far exceeded the reality.
Frankly, now, the entire kerfuffle seems trivial. Indeed, doesn't just about any football debate we've ever had compared to what's been on the table in the lead-up to this year's opening clash between the Tigers and Blues?
About 36 hours before the scheduled start of the season, the AFL is yet to categorically establish that there is even a game on to talk about. Not that that has had any impact on the potential crowd size, because we already knew that, effectively, would be zero.
We're still not entirely sure how long games will actually run, and how many players each side will field. And, of course, we still don't know who's scheduled to play whom beyond Round 4, presuming the season lasts even that long before it is summarily halted.
Or whether, if we actually complete the season and play a Grand Final, it will be held on the traditional last Saturday in September, or, perhaps most incredibly of all, in December.
Now those are what you call significant changes. And give you some idea just how quickly and dramatically the football landscape, not to mention the world at large, has changed.
It really is hard to believe. But then, only a few weeks ago, so was the idea of people in our own neighbourhoods fighting pitched supermarket battles over toilet paper and hand sanitiser, the fear of impacts of the coronavirus pandemic palpable as another nation attempts to at least minimise its destruction and, above and beyond anything else, its casualty toll.
In that terrible context, any sort of AFL competition we might see, provided it isn't also putting players and coaches at risk, I think is something for which to be thankful. But at the same time, it's hard to muster anything like the same sort of buzz any self-respecting football fan expects this time of year.
Most of all, I'd hate to think we ended up playing for a premiership which would always be popularly considered as having an asterisk against it, as enough sceptics have already suggested it should.
I wouldn't go that far. For example, if nothing else, an abbreviated 17-game home-and-away season at least makes for a more equitable draw than what league football has been saddled with since the last season of 12 teams and 22 rounds back in 1986.
Too short a season to mean anything? Well, we did have an AFL season of just 20 home and away rounds (only three more) back in 1993. Going admittedly a long way further back, there's been nearly a dozen other seasons of only 17 games, and for 15 seasons between 1953-67, only 18 games.
Any premier in 2020, even under these radically different circumstances, would still be worthy. It's whether that achievement might be paid sufficient kudos given the amount of uncertainty and distraction going on in the background (another worthy challenge in itself) which might be the issue.
In fact, that's been an issue enough in normal seasons recently - even the Grand Final these days dispensed with as a talking point within 48 hours of the premiership cup being hoisted as feverish trade period speculation takes hold.
Who knows when the next trade period will be? But there's going to be enough logistical and moral "what ifs" about the current status of the AFL season to end up, sadly, overshadowing even the most epic of contests for the entire duration of whatever games are played this year.
There's plenty of people arguing that the entire AFL season should have at best been delayed by two months (as have the various state leagues), or at worst abandoned altogether. I understand the thinking, though I'm of the school that any games we can play now are a calculated gamble worth taking.
That said, the most sobering consideration of all for AFL football out of this human tragedy is the realisation that even if, and when, the coronavirus as a health crisis is finally defeated, the cost to the game, literally, will continue to be felt for a long, long time.
It's a disaster from which AFL football may take a considerable time recovering. And that makes heated arguments about the wisdom of the 6-6-6 centre bounce rule seem quaint indeed.
*You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at footyology.com.au