Two hurdles down, one to go. Once again, all roads from Swansea will lead east on Saturday 27th May (and, thankfully, all trains will be heading east too!)

After the long slog of 46 league matches, the early doors highs of being free-scoring table toppers and the lows of the long run of indifferent form, the tension of a two-legged play off and the ensuing scramble for Millennium Stadium tickets, it all comes down to a one-off, winner-takes-all shootout against Barnsley.

And, man, am I looking forward to it. Time to put right the injustice perpetrated against us in our last play-off final, against Northampton in 1997. Time for our players to show that they really can cope with high drama big occasions. Time for the fans to get behind the team for one last time this season - united in our love for Swansea City.

If you can't be up for this match, if it doesn't make your heart beat a little faster each time you think of a stadium packed with 32,000 Jacks then I don't know what will. I'm willing to bet that the night before the game, there'll be adults across Swansea and further afield reduced to the level of kids at Christmas - unable to sleep for the excitement of it all.

Twenty-odd years after last being in the second tier of football in England and Wales, we're 90 minutes away from once again hosting the likes of Birmingham, Sunderland, Crystal Palace and yes, even Cardiff too. No offence meant, but when defeat will mean a season of facing the likes of Rotherham, Scunthorpe and Yeovil again - well, you can see why this match would raise the hairs on the back of the neck of the most obdurate Jack.

The semi-finals against Brentford seem a long time ago already, but the step up in quality between the two matches and the battling will to not let the belligerent athleticism of Brentford triumph were hugely encouraging signs. The first leg (or at least the first half of the first leg match) saw us knocked out of our stride, but the tide was turning for the Swans even before Brentford's keeper was sent off. That red card changed the match enough that it then became a case of trying to breach a valiant Brentford rear guard, although the goal from Sam Ricketts was so unexpected that you could see fans turning to one another and asking "where did that come from!?"

That the Swans were triumphant in a second leg performance marked with goals of a rare quality was a tribute to both players and manager - and the return of Kris O'Leary to bolster a midfield over-run in the first leg was a key factor, too. Brentford had no answer to the footballing ability of Swansea, and when they couldn't dominate physically, they had nothing to fall back on.

The remaining question, then, is do I think we can win it? Previous form goes out of the window, but it's encouraging to note that we've beaten and drawn with Barnsley this season, and that they only finished one point higher than us in the league. Their two ex-Jack strikers will be looking to put one over on us, but with Knight and Fallon on form and Trundle itching to show what he can do, then we've got firepower to spare. We've been to the Millennium and won already this season, and that's got to be a good omen; in some ways, the game being played being in Wales will make it less of a neutral venue than Barnsley would like, too. I'll make a prediction, then - given the way we've been this season, it wouldn't be the Swans without making us sweat, and so I'll plump for a 2-1 win to the Swans, with that man Trundle grabbing a late winner...