Sheffield Wednesday book Is There Time for a Winner? was a rollercoaster even for its authors, Alex Miller and Joe Crann

As a lifelong Sheffield Wednesday fan and now the Sheffield Star's Owls correspondent and a published author on his specialist subject, Joe Crann knows full well the dysfunctional nature of his club.

For Crann and fellow Star football writer Alex Miller, even writing a book on the Owls was traumatic.

Thankfully Is There Time for a Winner? had a happy ending and is a fitting way for fellow travelers on the journey to relive it.

"When we first spoke about doing it, it was looking like Sheffield Wednesday were going to win their first league title since 1959," recalls Miller. "It was in the midst of the 23-game unbeaten run.

"Around the Newcastle FA Cup win I started getting narratives running through my head and in any normal season at any normal club, beating the richest team in the fashion they did would have been the thing you pinned everything on, along with the league title. But it ended up having more narratives than we could have imagined.

"I remember Joe and I talking while we waited to speak to Darren (Moore, Wednesday's manager) at Peterborough (after a 4-0 League One play-off first leg defeat) fairly miserable. We said at least we didn't have to write a book in the next couple of months.

"After that comeback, it all hung on the result at Wembley and a couple of minutes after the final whistle as we were desperately trying to get copy out and do the promotion justice we both got a WhatsApp from Danny Hall, the publisher at Vertical, saying 'Get that book out!'

"It was almost like we couldn't (not write it) in the end."

Mirroring the book’s narrative, there were big doubts along the way.

"We'd just drawn with Bolton, the 23rd game of the run, and we said, 'We've definitely got to do this,'" recalls Crann.

"When we lost to Barnsley (at Oakwell), we thought it was just a blip, but at one point we were going to can it completely because we just felt like it wasn't a story Wednesday fans would want to read."

The Owls went from blowing automatic promotion and losing what felt terminally to this observer – sat next to a downcast Miller that night – in the first game of the play-offs to one of the all-time great comebacks, winning 5-1 at Hillsborough, then coming through a penalty shoot-out. The plot is well known, not some of the details Crann provides.

"I asked Liam Palmer for the equaliser was he meant to be there?" he recalls. "He said, 'Go back and watch the footage, there's a quick throw-in taken up the pitch,' and the ball comes out to Liam. If they'd played on from there, they probably wouldn't have scored but the referee pulled it back and Will Vaulks’ throw-in leads to the goal.

"We have a little bit more information than the average fan but when you speak to the players this whole other world opens up."

Crann still felt it like a fan, though.

"The amount of times I could feel myself getting choked up even when it was the sixth time I'd seen it... It was quite an emotionally-draining chapter," he says.

Fans are an important part of the last chapter, written by Miller about the final against Barnsley, settled by a Josh Windass diving header seconds before the whistle blew for another shoot-out.

"I got probably 1,000 or 2,000 words into the Wembley chapter six times and scrapped it," he says. "I was so obsessive about wanting to do it justice.

"I remember saying to Joe as we left the stadium, Peterborough was a monumental achievement by the players and staff. Looking around Wembley it felt like the final belonged to Sheffield Wednesday as an entity and I wanted to tell as many stories as I could.

"I put an appeal on Twitter and took a day's holiday to speak to as many people as I could. Some of the calls were 10 minutes, some were an hour and I was just blown away by how candid and trusting people were.

"I remember coming off one of the calls and just walking into a room with my wife and daughter in floods of tears."

Remarkably after such highs, by the time the quickly turned-around book was in the shops, the mood could scarcely have been more different, Moore leaving and his replacement, Xisco Munoz, mired at the bottom of the Championship.

"We've just done a few amendments for a second edition reprint between Munoz's sacking and Danny (Rohl)'s appointment and I wasn't expecting to be able to put in the next manager's reign in its entirety!" says Miller.

To read the book now is to be given hope Rohl can turn things around.

"Danny was saying on his first day it gives us a starting point, that so many of the players are still there, you can look at that night and say, 'There's something about this group,'" he points out.

The emotions around certain clubs feel more extreme than others, and Wednesday are one. An interview with sports psychologist Tom Bates looks at his part in "the Miracle of Hillsborough" and Rohl's first backroom appointment, Sascha Lense, has similar training.

"The things the Wednesday players have had to deal with are not normal," argues Crann.

"Darren and Wednesday wouldn't have been able to do what they did at Peterborough without Darren having bought into the whole psychology aspect.

"Performance manager is Sascha's actual title but he's going to be helping with the psychology as well. Tom is a psychologist by trade whereas Sascha's picked up psychology post-football."

The emotions around the club are understandable when you read some of the backstories Miller uncovered.

"When you really boil it down, for so many people it's a load of men that are younger than them, who get paid 10 times as much as them to kick a ball about but it's not (just) something to fill people's time," says Miller. "People's lives can be and so often are enhanced or pulled together by it.

"It's not the sort of club where you can watch the game on a Saturday and forget about it until the next Saturday. It's all-encompassing for everyone."

Is There Time for a Winner?': Sheffield Wednesday's 2022/23 Promotion Miracle by Alex Miller and Joe Crann is published by Vertical Editions, RRP £12.99.