Some anniversaries are cause for celebration, others for grave reflection. And some just continue to make you shake your head.
Round 7 will be the 50th anniversary of what would become known as the "Windy Hill Brawl", an unsavoury explosion of anger at half-time of a game between Essendon and Richmond in May 1974.
It is perhaps the most unsavoury punch-up ever filmed on a league football field. And it began seemingly from nowhere, the Bombers and Tigers walking off the ground at half-time, when Essendon runner Laurie Ashley gave a mouthful to Richmond strongman Mal Brown.
Within seconds, verbal insults had given way to a wild free-for-all, fights breaking out all over the place involving players, coaches, officials, police on foot and on horseback, and, incredibly, a six-year-old boy who had innocently wandered into the fray.
Soon, Essendon fitness adviser Jim Bradley was laying motionless on the ground, nursing a broken jaw. Richmond ruckman Brian "Whale" Roberts was likewise laying prone with a broken nose. Such was the chaos, he thought he'd been kicked in the head by a police horse.
Some participants got caught up in the fracas simply trying to do the right thing, like Richmond director and later AFL Tribunal chairman Neil Busse, who was trying to restrain his club's team manager, Graeme Richmond.
When order was finally restored, the Richmond players ran the gauntlet of enraged Essendon supporters as they walked up the then-unprotected race. Not that the Tigers were shying away from returning fire, player Kevin Morris at one stage leaning out of the rooms during the break to throw a bucket of water over the seething mob.
Reigning premier Richmond would go on to win a tight contest by 10 points. But the result became almost incidental in the aftermath. While a Federal election was being held the same day, this ugly incident made headlines in Melbourne nearly as big as the Whitlam government's narrow retention of power.
With, somewhat incredibly, no reports lodged on the day, the VFL called an emergency meeting of directors to discuss appropriate action. Within a week, after a report by investigations officer Jack Chessell, seven players and officials were cited.
Essendon defender Ron Andrews was suspended for six games for striking Richmond's Roberts. Bradley received a six-game penalty for striking Brown. Tiger Stephen Parsons, just 17 and playing only his third senor game, received four weeks for striking Bradley.
Brown copped a one-week penalty for striking runner Ashley, who himself was rubbed out for six weeks, and told by tribunal chairman John Winneke: "You have the dubious distinction, Mr Ashley, of starting off what can only be described as an unseemly brawl."
The fall-out continued seven months later, when Graeme Richmond, having just served a long suspension, managed to have the $2000 fine imposed upon him by the VFL rescinded, and in turn dropped a Supreme Court writ against the league.
He and Parsons had already had assault charges laid by police dismissed in the Melbourne Magistrate's Court. "It caused me a lot of grief," Parsons told me for "The Sunday Age" on the 20th anniversary of the Windy Hill brawl in 1994. "I don't think it did me much good at all, to tell you the truth." He would play only another two senior games for the Tigers.
Bradley told me in 1994 that his broken jaw had been diagnosed immediately by the club doctor. "He said they'd take me to hospital. I said I'd go myself, and that's how I found out I was concussed as well. I got there, but I couldn't remember driving."
Tiger premiership player (and later Essendon recruiter Merv Keane) recalled Graeme Richmond walking into the rooms "with his tie ripped around the other side of his neck". "It was a bit like those old Western pub brawls," said Tiger tough man Robert McGhie. That's probably the last time we'll see a decent one like that."
"Mal Brown walked up the race with his arms in the air after it," recalled Richmond's Bill Nettlefold, "and the crowd just went absolutely berserk, spitting and swearing.
"I was right at the back, walking up the race, then just as I got to the door, Kevin Morris appeared with a bucket of water and threw it over the crowd. Fair dinkum, if there'd been a wooden grandstand, they would have ripped it down board by board.
The famous little boy from the 1974 Windy Hill brawl, James Ferguson, was in #TheFrontBar crowd tonight! pic.twitter.com/Eef0wunqiP
— The Front Bar - JOIN US ON TUESDAY! (@thefrontbar7) July 19, 2018
"It was pretty willing in the rooms. Some of the eyes were not on this earth, they were spinning around somewhere else. It was scary, because it had the capacity to get completely out of control, and I don't think anyone knew where it was headed."
Dangerous territory for grown men, let alone a small, young, frightened child. Which remains the most incredible part of this sordid incident, into the midst of flying bodies, punches and mayhem running six-year-old James Ferguson.
He'd been separated from his father and brothers in the crowd, and, escorted by a policeman, was searching for them, when the brawl began. Without a second thought, he followed the man in blue into the thick of the action, standing right next to the prostrate form of the unconscious Bradley.
"I'd gone off to get a hot dog or a drink or something and on the way back I got lost. I told somebody I was lost, so they passed me over the fence to this policeman," Ferguson told me.
"He told me to stay with him and hold on to his coat, and we were walking around the ground looking for my parents. Then the 'blue' started, and it was just all-in. He ran on to the ground, so I just followed him."
There were longer-term ramifications from the Windy Hill brawl. The VFL acted immediately to reduce the number of club staff allowed on the ground. It forced clubs to provide greater protection to teams as they left the arena. And it led to a review, not for the last time, of alcohol laws at football games.
And the kid, now 56? Well, James Ferguson had an awesome video for his 21st, was a guest on "The Front Bar" a few years ago, and has a leading, if accidental role, every time someone puts on a video of everyone's favourite bit of footy nostalgia, the "Sensational Seventies" documentary.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at Footyology.