As a hurler he could have been more. Having won minor and under-21 All Irelands with Cork in the 60s, he soon found himself benched. Bad enough being a substitute goalkeeper but he still feels he should have been first choice, that he was better than Paddy Barry.

Moving to the capital didn't make things much better either. His native county refused to accommodate players who lived elsewhere and when he initially approached the Dublin County Board he was told they "didn't take to culchies".

While his teammates on those underage teams became glorious, he became a journeyman. By the time he made a substitute appearance for Wicklow in 1990 against Armagh, he had played for four different counties in four different decades with no spikes on a long graph other than a British Championship with his pit stop of London. Now to make amends. It's just his choice of location doesn't go along with a recovery.

"Well I wasn't going to take the Wicklow job when they approached me late last year.

I'd given up on anything like that and become heavily involved with Kilmacud Crokes. I'd held every role from captaining the seniors to chairman and at the time I was back in charge with the under-14s. I wasn't keen to leave them either because I thought they were a cracking bunch of kids that were going places. And besides, I had been interested in doing the Wicklow job about 12 years ago, I sent them a letter confirming my interest and nothing ever came of that."

It all outweighed the perks of such a job and Mitchell said no, that it wasn't for him. But his family weren't having it. When he told his children they were annoyed.

When he told his wife she said he'd regret it for the rest of his life. "I reconsidered and I went and met with the Wicklow County Board and someone actually brought the letter I had sent before. I knew An Post were bad but this was ridiculous.

They were talking to me about it and said that I'd better not train the team twice a week because it was going to be hard enough to get them out once. I didn't think that was anywhere near good enough so I went around to all the clubs in the county and sat down and had a real heart to heart with the players. Not that there were that many clubs to go around you'll understand.

Carnew, Kiltegan, I don't think anyone ever went down there.

"I said to them, to paraphrase the line of a Wicklow man in Parnell, there's no halting the march of a nation, so why should that be any different for a county. It changed the attitude of the players and now we are training physically two nights a week and hurling on a Saturday. Throw in a game and we might be out five times in eight days and that's the way it should be."

Mitchell refuses to be surprised by their rise of late, having gone unbeaten on the race to today's final. It's all about speed. He learned that in his younger years when playing senior for UCC and junior for Blarney. Nothing was different between the two levels other than the pace of the game and he quickly instilled that in his players. "We have good hurlers. We have great hurlers. I always said I'd pay money to watch Wayne Sherlock and Don Hyland is no different at all. He's the only Wicklow player to win a Railway Cup medal and he's a brilliant striker of the ball.

But people have been way off the mark when it comes to us. Like they talk about Micko influencing us. That stuff is bullshit. I don't believe in this Messiah crap, it's the hurlers that have made a difference. Then people talk about the money invested but we have different sponsors to the footballers and have not seen a single penny.

"And I don't hide my irritation. Like I look at the media and I wonder if there is a hurling writer in Ireland that has seen Wicklow this year. Like I remember our first day out and we were playing Louth and some dickhead in a national paper tipped them. Really like, does he have a clue about hurling? But let them on, I tell the lads our strength is on the field. I hope that's the case on Sunday."

And if it is?

"If we did win it, it would be my greatest ever sporting achievement and one I would take the most satisfaction from."