Albion's promotion parade was seized upon by supporters of other clubs on social media.

How they scoffed about a celebration for finishing second.

It is understandable, I suppose, that strangers do not recognise the club's DNA.

A club that 20 years ago was on its knees, one place off the foot of the Football League, homeless and rudderless.

A club which has never before been in the Premier League and had not been promoted to the top flight since Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.

That is why an estimated 100,000 supporters (the initial police estimate of 60,000 was subsequently upgraded) flocked onto the seafront in the early evening sunshine on Sunday, waving flags, raising their voices and their mobile phones for snapshots of history.

Images which, likes the black and white versions of their 1979 forefathers, will recur through the generations.

They do not, as Chris Hughton (below) pointed out, all go to games. How could they? The attendance was more than three times the capacity of the Amex.

The Argus: It does not mean they do not care passionately about not just a football club but an institution, an intrinsic part of their community.

The branding of the buses said it, 'We're On Our Way...Together'.

It is more than just a slogan. Retaining that spirit will be essential to the survival prospects next season.

Hughton's squad has its own more recent DNA, two years rather than 20.

The bulk of his players have been together, through the excruciating low of going so close last season to the ecstatic high of making amends this time (below).

The Argus: Diverse experiences like that are a unifying force, a force which will be needed in some dark moments ahead.

They are coming, you can be certain of that. After two years of winning, those players will have to cope with the unfamiliar feeling of losing.

It will happen quite a lot, sometimes quite often in succession.

Hughton and his recruitment team will have to get the balance right this summer when making the additions required to help the team deal with the sharp rise.

They must be not just the right type of players to raise the quality but the right type of characters too to fit the dressing room dynamic.

That dynamic developed over the last two seasons has to be sustained. It can carry you a long way in difficult times.

It is not just the players who will have to get used to losing more than they have been accustomed to.

Some of the supporters need educating as well. Not the overwhelming majority, appreciative of the scale of the task confronting Hughton.

The Argus: The vocal, moaning minority. The ones who will be calling for his head if Albion start, as the side led by Alan Mullery (above) did in 1979, with two wins and nine defeats by the onset of winter.

It is in such circumstances that Hughton's players will have to grasp again their capacity to handle those twin imposters, triumph and adversity.

They came through the latter last season, at Middlesbrough and then against Sheffield Wednesday in the play-offs, to achieve the former.

They have regrouped and gone again, shrugged off the setbacks.

That DNA will not be enough, in isolation, to last in the rarefied atmosphere of the Premier League - but it's a damn good starting point.