Here, Chief Sports Writer of The Daily Telegraph and avid Seagull Paul Hayward looks back on the last two unbelievable years for the Albion.

FIVE years ago I wrote the text for a book that was both cheerless and inspiring.

It was called More Than 90 Minutes, and it told the story of the Albion's near-death experience against Hereford in the summer of 1997.

Five tumultuous seasons later, I joined a group of friends in establishing Pitch Publishing, whose first book, We Are Brighton, tells a wholly different tale. Inside its covers is a mostly pictorial account of "two seasons, two promotions, two championships. Two unbelievable years in the life of Brighton and Hove Albion." How did we get from there to here?

Miraculously, the club is off Prozac and has taken up the natural high of hoisting trophies. More Than 90 Minutes is dark, grainy, apocalyptic. It shows sit-down protests, demos outside Bill Archer's house and the last days of the Goldstone Ground. Reading it now is like following a funeral cortege, only to find out that a Mardi Gras breaks out before they can nail the lid to the box.

Brighton are Lazarus. It normally takes a candyman of Mohammed Fayed proportions to launch a team from the bottom of Division Three to two successive championship-winning fiestas.

The fact that the stage for this dramatic rebirth was dear old Withdean makes the achievement all the sweeter. The book shows how and why.

We Are Brighton! (Pitch, £25) has a party hat on and a whistle in its mouth. Its dominant images are silverware being raised, champagne drenching the players and Bobby Zamora causing havoc around opposition centre-halves.

With an unblinking eye and a steady camera, Bennett Dean followed the resurrection from start to finish (has it finished, or can the Albion thrive against Derby, Ipswich Town and Coventry?).

There are 188 pages of euphoria and most of it comes from the players, who are about to discover whether two seasons of self-improvement can stretch to three.

Already that question hangs naggingly in the air. The one sad note in the We Are Brighton! book is that the two managers who can take most credit for reviving the starting XI walked away: Micky Adams, to Leicester as Dave Bassett's No 2 (Micky has taken full charge now), and Peter Taylor into unemployment.

My own feeling is that Martin Hinshelwood was the right appointment. He has the look of a consolidator and is a good judge of a player. The Albion are stronger now from Zamora right down to the hamburger sellers (if they'll forgive the word down).

Hinsh and Dean Wilkins, his fellow reformer of the youth system, have always struck me as real Albion men who love the club and have a compulsion to win. Look how they carry themselves.

But now Hinshelwood has to carry an over-achieving squad to a level that many of the players will initially find alien. Ipswich, remember, played Inter Milan last season in the UEFA Cup. The trip to Derby will mean trotting out at Pride Park, the venue for a recent England game.

Brighton have found themselves in the transit lounge between the lower leagues and the riches of the Premiership. But this is what we all yearned for, what some demanded even, so now's not the time to start berating the club for what it hasn't got. We ought to be grateful for the things we've gained.

In Divisions Two and Three, Kuipers, Cullip and Zamora upheld Brian Clough's old theory that every good team needs a good No.1, No.5 and No.9.

It's no secret that the club went into the summer needing a new central defender and another partner for Zamora up front. They also need the local authority to push for Falmer much harder than they have thus far.

I'm sick of my hometown being a backwater for sport. Any politician worth his lunch allowance understands the connection between recreation and regeneration.

Falmer is the city of Brighton and Hove's most urgent need. For many big clubs visiting Withdean this season, disorientation will give Hinshelwood's men a psychological advantage for at least the first half-hour. Ultimately, though, the Albion need a cathedral.

Don't get greedy, though, or lose touch with how far the club have come in five ultra-dramatic years. If in doubt, return to We Are Brighton! and give thanks that Edgar Street wasn't the funeral pyre. Nor was the Priestfield Stadium, Gillingham, that joke exile dreamt up by clowns.

Looking at the two books now, More Than 90 Minutes seems as dated as Dickie Attenborough running through the Lanes in Brighton Rock. Football was never meant to be about braziers and banners. It's supposed to be fun.

Five years, two worlds, two books. And of the two, Give me We Are Brighton! any day.