What's the best way to find out that the club you support has been relegated?
Would you prefer to be at the ground as they sink to another defeat?
Would you prefer to be there while they win, but fall through the trapdoor thanks to results elsewhere?
How about sitting at work watching Wayne Rooney do what he never does for England, while two results elsewhere relegate your team - who aren't even playing?
The latter scenario happened to me last night.
For the last 20 years, as long as I've been a journalist, I've followed the fortunes of Tamworth FC.
My allegiance for the Lambs, I admit, is wholly coincidental. I was born in Kidderminster and first developed my love for football as a boy watching Kidderminster Harriers.
My father first took me to Aggborough when I was nine in 1973 and I spent many happy Saturday afternoons there during my teenage years. Incidentally, I would walk the two miles on my own from my home through the town centre to the ground. Would an 11-year-old do that these days?
In those days, the Harriers were in the Southern League and that's where I developed my love of non-league football. Uncomplicated sport, played by enthusiastic players who went to work during the day, trained twice a week and spent their Saturdays trekking round the country to places like Minehead, Corby, Banbury and Merthyr to play.
Sure, they got paid for it, but that was a side-issue. They did it because they wanted to.
So when I got my first job, as a reporter on the Tamworth Herald in 1986, it was inevitable that I would visit the Lamb.
In fact, I think the sports editor, who swiftly befriended me, became my best man and is still a great friend, took me there after my second day on the paper.
Tamworth v Tipton Town in the West Midlands League in March 1986, then, was my Lambs initiation.
I loved it. Wooden benches, muddy pitch, pouring rain, a noisy crowd of around 600 people. Proper sport.
Since then, both the Lambs and I have come a long way. Tamworth have been on a constant upward curve, from the WML into the Southern League Midlands Division, into the Premier Division and then, four years ago, into the Conference, the highest level of non-league football.
Along the way, they've made a number of appearances alongside the professional clubs in the FA Cup, won the FA Vase in 1989 [beating Sudbury Town in a replay at Peterborough after a memorable day at the old Wembley] and lost the FA Trophy final in 2003 after a less-than-memorable day at Villa Park. And they've never been relegated.....until last night.
It is true that they finished in the relegation places this time last year, but were saved by the financial failings of others. Yet actually falling down a division is something that hasn't happened to this club since the mid-1980s.
And although the Lambs have been a major part of my personal and professional life for over 20 years, I'm not that disappointed.
Why? Because I've come to intensely dislike the Football Conference. Ever since automatic promotion and relegation between the League and the Conference began in 1986-7, the league has adopted an increasingly professional attitude. And I mean professional in the unpleasant sense of the word.
At first, it was just the clubs coming down from the League, like Lincoln City, Darlington (managed by Brian Little), Carlisle and Colchester. But as the potloads of cash being hurled at football by BSkyB began to cascade down the pyramid, it spread like a virus.
Recklessly ambitious clubs, often with shaky financial foundations, began spending money like water in their efforts to get in the League and claim their slice of the bonanza. We've had clubs with home gates of not much more than 1,200 paying their star striker £1,200 a week.
It's now reached the point where Tamworth were one of just four clubs in the league this season working on a part-time basis. With one game to go, three of the top five clubs are former Football League teams.
It's not funny, it's not fun and it's doing long-term damage to the health of the game as clubs whose costs exceed their revenues troop through the bankruptcy courts and drift in and out of administration.
It's been a constant theme of posts to the flourishing Tamworth fans forum this season (www.tamworthfans.co.uk/Forum). "I'll watch this team whatever league we're in and I'll still have a team to watch, unlike fans from the likes of Crawley, Aldershot, Newport County etc).
That's the right attitude and one football should be addressing. Is it time for the league to have a salary cap? Should we stop automatic promotion and relegation and draw a distinct line between professional and non-league football?
I'm not sure. But I do know that next season, in the delightfully-titled Blue Square Conference North, I'll be watching far more competitive football and players who aren't earning money their clubs can't afford.
Which is why I became a non-league fan in the first place.