Town defender Janoi Donacien admits he will be surprised if team-mate Wes Burns doesn’t make it a clean sweep of individual honours by being crowned the supporters’ Player of the Year after Saturday’s final game of the season against Charlton Athletic at Portman Road.
Following the game, the winner of the annual end-of-season poll will be announced at a sell-out event in the FanZone and Burns is a firm favourite for the accolade at the end of his first campaign with the Blues.
The first of last summer’s 19 signings, Burns has already been named in the EFL League One Team of the Season, and he added both the Players’ and Corporate Sponsors’ Player of the Year awards at the club’s own end-of-season dinner on Tuesday.
Right-sided defender Donacien, who finished a close runner-up in the players’ voting, clearly expects right wing-back partner Burns to make it a hat-trick of personal awards to bring down the curtain of a largely frustrating season for the Blues and their fans.
When it was suggested in humour that Burns was being a bit greedy in monopolising the awards, 28-year-old Donacien laughed and said: "I expected it to be honest. The boy’s been on fire and, like he said, this has been the best year of his career so it’s no surprise to any of us that he’s being recognised in this way.
"He fully deserves his place in the League One Team of the Season, as well as the individual awards he has picked up, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the fans’ Player of the Year as well.”
When it was pointed out that Donacien would be gaining a lot of votes, he added: "It’s always nice to be recognised, especially by the supporters, and I’ve worked hard to have a good season. But I think Wes will clear up again and good luck to him.”
After looking as if he might be on his way out of the club last year, Donacien has established himself in new boss Kieran McKenna’s side and has even captained Town on a couple of occasions in the current campaign.
What did that mean to him? He said: "It was a bit strange if I’m honest. I didn’t really see it coming when the gaffer came up to me and said he was making me captain.
"It’s a tremendous honour for any player to captain his team and it meant a lot to me. I hope it happens again. I was captain at Accrington Stanley as well but never at this level.”
Donacien has been ever-present under McKenna, a run of just four defeats in 22 games, but Town go into Saturday’s clash with the Addicks, who are just one place lower in the League One table, 13 points adrift of the play-offs after winning just one of their most recent eight games.
With another bumper crowd of more than 24,000 set to attend, Donacien knows the importance of sending fans away with a smile on their faces and full of optimism for the new season due to get under way on 30 July.
He added: "It will be the same as any other week in that we always go out and try to win but with it being the last game of the season we definitely want to turn in a good performance for our supporters and at the same time give them a taste of what to expect next season.
"We are looking on enviously at a lot of the other teams, those who are going up automatically and the others who will be contesting the play-offs, because we know how much we have let ourselves down in some games this season and all we can do now is finish with a good display on Saturday and look forward to the new season starting in three months’ time.
"It is very frustrating the way the season is ending for us, but we let ourselves down early doors when we didn’t have the best of starts. It’s tough to take but we’re already looking ahead to the new season with optimism that we can have a more successful time.
"The position we are in at the moment isn’t good enough for this club and its fans. Like I said, we let ourselves down with the start we made to this season. It took us too long to get going and then once we did get going there were games when we dropped points that we shouldn’t have done.
"There were a lot of games when we were pegged back and had to settle for a draw. There were a lot of draws we didn’t need and, of course, it meant dropping points that we couldn’t really afford to drop.
"After Saturday we’ll have a break — it’s important we get away from football for a bit and spend some relaxation time with the family — and once that’s out of the way it will be time to return for pre-season training and we need to hit that hard.
"Once we’re training and playing the pre-season friendly games, we’ll be focusing on nothing else but the new season.”