A disastrous trip Down Under in the summer of 2021-22 ended several Test careers and forced major change at the very top of English men's cricket.
And an equally catastrophic Ashes series four years later now threatens to do the same as sport's grim reaper awaits the shambolic squad when it lands at Heathrow Airport.
The spectre of COVID-19 loomed large over that famed 4-0 thrashing in 2021-22 but this time the tourists have little to blame other than their own incompetence and arrogance.
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A failure to properly prepare, and a stubborn refusal to adapt to Australian conditions or a quality opposition bowling attack resigned England to a 4-1 series defeat.
It's the fourth consecutive Ashes tour to Australia that England has lost at least four matches. Australia has not lost four matches in an Ashes series since 1978-79.
Captain Ben Stokes, coach Brendon McCullum and their players can dress it up any way they like. But the fact is they're not a very good Test cricket team.
"Bazball" is a sham that has failed to beat Australia or India in almost four years of its painful existence. Former English players, and commentators from the motherland, are demanding its immediate demise.
"The way that England play, that Bazball method, the ultra-risky method with the bat in hand hasn't worked because they haven't won the big series," former captain Michael Vaughan told Reuters during the Sydney Test.
In a separate piece on Fox Cricket, Vaughan continued, "Their preparation was very poor. Their stubbornness in the way that they play has been very poor for a while now. They haven't accepted that you need to go up and down the gears in Test match cricket. Obviously, their bowling has been found wanting.
"This England group have got a lot of thinking to do, a lot of accepting that things haven't been right. We know at the end of Ashes tours – particularly when you've had two goes at trying to win the Ashes – generally personnel does change. But if this management carries on, they clearly have to carry on and change.
"They have to change the culture around the group. They seem to have created a cult around the way this team play and talk. A lot of it is nonsense and that has to change."
Outspoken former Test player Geoffrey Boycott was more scathing in a column for the UK Telegraph following the SCG loss.
"England's three wise men turned out to be the Three Stooges. Brendon McCullum, (ECB managing director) Rob Key and Ben Stokes sold a lie for three years," Boycott wrote.
"McCullum and Key said they had been planning for the Ashes all that time but this was a slapstick tour riddled with mistakes and they deserved to lose 4-1.
"Nobody tells them off, no accountability, and nobody gets dropped so they just keep doing the same daft things. Why should the players change, adapt or improve if the coach and captain are OK with it?
"People are now getting fed up with this way of playing and if Key keeps backing McCullum to allow the players to continue making the same mistakes then his job may be on the line. Ego, arrogance and hubris overtakes common sense."
When asked by another former captain, Nasser Hussain, whether the team would change its approach to Test cricket, McCullum took "offence" with the question on Thursday. If he's offended by that, wait until he reads the newspapers on Friday.
Prior to this Ashes series, legendary English fast bowler Stuart Broad declared this to be Australia's worst Test team since 2010.
And, to be fair, Broad may have been right.
Josh Hazlewood played no part in it. Pat Cummins only played one Test, Nathan Lyon played just two – and he didn't bowl in Perth and then was injured midway through the Adelaide match, both of which Australia won.
Australia had players out of form – see Cameron Green, Marnus Labuschagne, and Usman Khawaja – and blooded Test rookies Jake Weatherald and Brendan Doggett.
And despite all that – and potentially being the worst Aussie team since 2010 – they still managed to pummel England into the dirt.
Broad has often been delusional about his country's Test team. Following that 2021-22 catastrophe he declared the series was "void" – a statement he walked back on years later.
"It was that painful an experience that it didn't count in my own brain," Broad told Jos Buttler's podcast of that Ashes series.
Buttler was one of two English players who never played Test cricket again following that tour. The other was opening batter Haseeb Hameed.
Since the turn of the century a total of 14 English cricketers have played their final Test match in Sydney, the last stop on the Ashes tour. Will the 2025-26 affair end any careers? Time will only tell.
In the months following 2021-22 English cricket endured a serious shake up. Joe Root quit as captain, Chris Silverwood was axed as coach and Ashley Giles was dumped as boss. Stokes, McCullum, and Key took the reins.
Now it's highly likely those three men will fall on their swords in the coming months. But who is ready to replace them?
https://twitter.com/KP24/status/2009200842771964370?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In the case of Stokes, his deputy is now 26-year-old Harry Brook.
But the Test vice-captain is on a final warning with the ECB over behavioural issues after he had an altercation with a nightclub bouncer in New Zealand.
The man he replaced as Test vice captain, Ollie Pope, will be lucky to hold his spot in the team following his dismal performances in Australia.
There are some green shoots emerging from the muck.
Brook is a generational talent who may be being cruelled by the McCullum philosophy. If he gets on the straight and narrow he could be the batter of his generation.
And 22-year-old Jacob Bethell emerged as a star of the future with a maiden ton in Sydney. Fast bowler Josh Tongue, too, was mighty impressive on his first tour Down Under.
Vaughan is being optimistic about England's next trip to Australia in four years.
"A lot of these players are going to be back in four years' time, and that's the learnings from this trip is that these players that have been there, they're young enough and good enough to learn from this experience and make sure in four years' time they gather all the information that has worked… and they also gather all that information that has been wrong and make sure they're better prepared, they're hardened," he told Fox Cricket.
"They'll be a more experienced cricket team… but it's so important they're not stubborn and they don't just think: 'We had a little bit of bad fortune. Preparation was right and we just didn't quite get it right on the field'. The preparation here has been, at times, shambolic. They've got to accept that and in four years' time they've got to make sure they get it right."
For the sake of the Ashes and for Test cricket, let's hope England put up more of a fight next time they're here.
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