Aaron Drinan being named PFA League Two Player of the Year is the crowning achievement for one of the most impressive seasons in Swindon Town history.
A year ago, Swindon were panicking about the injury to Harry Smith. What would they do without their main goal threat? How could they cope without the player the team was built around? They were making a late push for a new striker, which turned out to be Ollie Palmer, in an attempt to find a new main man. But he was right there all along.
Fast forward 12 months, and Drinan spent the evening at Manchester Opera House collecting his second League Two Player of the Season award, this time voted by his peers in the Professional Footballers' Association, as having been the outstanding player in the division last year.
It is a season like few others in Swindon’s near-150-year history. A player who spent his first 18 months at the club as a hard worker, but one often maligned for his lack of return where it counts. In the three seasons leading up to 2025/26, he scored 11 goals across his time at Leyton Orient and Town. Even his perceived purple patch leading up to the injury he sustained in February 2025 included just one goal, a debatable one against Carlisle United at that.
But a desperation to come back and prove that he was worthy of staying at Swindon saw the monster within finally be unleashed. His goals against Shrewsbury Town and Crewe Alexandra were probably more about the team than just Drinan alone, but they showed that he could be the focal point. Whatever wizardry got the ball to the top of the pitch would not be wasted.
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Soon it was undeniable whose team this was. Palmer might have arrived with the idea of him being the main goal-getter, but it turned out that his skills were better used in the supply chain, with Drinan as the shop window.
Few seasons have been as surprising and as devastating. Even as things began to tail off elsewhere in the team, if the ball ever came his way in the penalty box, it was going in the back of the net. And his ruthless finish against Cheltenham Town proves that now he is out of his cage; he will not be going back in. No longer happy with being that hard-running second fiddle who can be shunted out to the wing.
For every one of the Holloway runs he filmed whilst he was back in Ireland, he deserves that trophy and the fancy black-tie event, rubbing shoulders with international superstars.
His name is now rightfully among the best goalscorers of modern times with Swindon, like Eoin Doyle, Nicky Ajose, Charlie Austin, and Simon Cox. And the best news is, unlike that group, he is still a Swindon player after his big, breakout year.
He remains the star for this year, hoping his goals can accomplish what they didn’t last season: promotion. Will this finally get his name sung on terraces?
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