Kevin O’Connor has been striving to get Brentford back to the second tier of English football for so long that success this Sunday will finally be mission completed.

The Bees skipper will lead the team out at Wembley knowing they are just 90 minutes from a return to the second division for the first time in 20 years.

The 31-year-old, a veteran of 14 seasons at Griffin Park, has come close before, losing the 2002 play-off final to Stoke City and the 2005 and 2006 semi-finals to Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea.

And he is desperate for this season to end differently.

“Twenty years seems too long,” he said.

“I have been at the club for 14 years and all I have ever known is League One and League Two – we have been striving to get there for so long.

“It is so close now. If we can just get there, it will be the best day of my career, definitely.

“The chance to get to the Championship is huge, it doesn’t matter how we get there, just that we do.”

It has been a rollercoaster end to the season for Brentford, having missed out on automatic promotion in the last minute of the regular season and then needing a dramatic penalty shoot-out to get past Swindon Town in the play-off semi-final.

“We have come so close it would be a travesty if we didn’t make it now,” said O’Connor.

“You couldn’t script it really. The past five or six weeks have been unbelievable with everything that has happened and we want to finish it on a high now and do it for the fans. 

“Yeovil Town have had a great season themselves though.

“We have played them twice and lost to them twice so, if you look at it that way, they are favourites.

“In the end, it is whoever can handle the day better. We have seen it where teams go there and do not turn up.”

O’Connor is one of four players in the squad – along with Simon Moore, Toumani Diagouraga and Sam Saunders – who played at Wembley two years ago when the Bees made the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final, losing 1-0 to Carlisle. It is an experience he hopes will stand the team in good stead for Sunday.

“We played there a couple of years ago so we know what to expect,” he said.

“I have talked to the others a little bit who haven’t played there but they haven’t really asked too much either.

“We had a wander around Wembley on Tuesday and went in the changing rooms and had a look around.

“Despite the big stadium and the big game, we have to try and think of it as just another game.”