This evening, Kevin O'Brien will pack his bag and head out to a Wicklow training session for what could be the last time. With some 14 years of intercounty football behind him, there's no more turning back the clock, no more postponing the inevitable.

O'Brien has sighted the final curtain. If Wicklow can beat Wexford in the last stage of the Leinster football round-robin series on Saturday, then there's a couple more games in him, that's all. If not, he can look back down the road and know he's done well.

It was the 1986 championship when O'Brien first donned the blue and gold of Wicklow's senior team. Almost without fail, he's been part of every Wicklow side since, as regular a forward as any lining out with a county. Yet come the end, he's not expecting any blowing of the trumpet, or any fanfare exit.

"You could be looking at my testimonial match on Saturday evening," he says. "I mean, if I was a horse I'd have been put down long ago. There aren't many 34-year-olds playing these days and I have struggled a lot this year. A couple of bad knees and a young family doesn't help, so if we lose Saturday then that's probably it."

Even with his love of the game undiminished (he still plans to play with Baltinglass), O'Brien can read the signs. "When all the young fellas start passing you out in training you know you're in trouble. Even the sub goalkeeper here has passed me out. I've often said to him that if he ever passed me out, I'd have to throw it away. And he passed me out the other night.

"There had been times as well when you'd travel an hour to training and wonder. Still, you have a tough session and it's all worthwhile. And I've always loved the competitive edge. The last few years people have asked me why I bother at this age but there's nothing like the buzz of championship day. It's as simple as that."

This season's round-robin series has been a great bonus for Wicklow and it was needed to build the younger players' confidence, O'Brien says.

"So often in the past we'd come up against teams like Meath or Dublin without any self-belief. We beat Carlow in the first championship game, and I know it wasn't pretty to watch, but at least it was a win. And a lot of the younger players got a lot of confidence out of that. Three championship matches in a row is something I've never had and I was looking forward to it all year. Now it comes down to Saturday, and if we beat Wexford then you're looking at a three-way playoff. That's going to make it very interesting."

O'Brien's All Star award of 1990 is Wicklow's sole honour of that sort, and it garlands a fine career. But, call it modesty or call it regret, O'Brien doesn't want applause. "People say to me that it has been a great individual career," he says, "but you have to be honest and say that the county has failed. We've had some decent teams but we've nothing to show for it, so that must be a failure."

He rates the current management under Moses Coffey as the best of recent years, although there's still the problem of better players deciding not to play. If this team is to have a real future, he says, then it's time to cut out the excuses. "We've got to get everybody together and all the county board must get behind the wheel. For a start, the clubs aren't doing enough to encourage the players. They'll be upset at me saying this but that's the realistic thing about it. You only get out what you put in.

"If we get every possible candidate then we wouldn't be to far off the Kildares or the Dublins. But you find excuses made on high stools everywhere, that Wicklow is a divided county with the mountains and all that. None of that washes with me. There are worse mountains in Donegal, Kerry and places like that."

Old rivals Wexford will arrive in Aughrim on Saturday in pole position for the quarter-final place with Dublin. Wicklow's loss to Longford last weekend, a game O'Brien missed due to his son's confirmation, means that Wicklow now have it all to play for.

"If you come through this series then you definitely deserve to play Dublin in Croke Park. Either way, it's still been a lot better than going straight into a game against Meath, putting up a decent performance for 50 minutes and then watching them pull away to win by five or six points.

"And I suppose it would be nice for me to go out with a bang. But it would be a lot bigger plus for the younger players, and give them huge self-belief. Success breeds success, you know."