Aaron Drinan prodded home his first goal of pre-season late on to earn Swindon Town a victory over Southampton Under-21s in a behind-closed-doors friendly.

Swindon brought up their fourth win in five pre-season matches under new head coach Mark Kennedy as they came from behind to defeat the young Southampton side in a game at the Premier League club’s training ground.

Despite the hosts opening the scoring midway through the first half against a youthful Town line-up, Paul Glatzel levelled the scores within two minutes of the restart before Drinan poked home six minutes from time to see Swindon come away from the south coast as victors.

Kennedy continued to ramp up his side’s preparations for the new season as he fielded two sides during the game, with the bulk of the starting team given an hour of action before the rest of the team was brought on for the end of the match.

Having looked to give the starting team an hour at Melksham Town on Tuesday, Kennedy gave an opportunity to the rest of the squad to get an extended run-out against the Saints, with only Saidou Khan and Jack Bycroft remaining in the line-up from the off.

With the side behind at the break, Rosaire Longelo was brought on at half-time for Trialist A before more substantial changes were made after 60 minutes, aside from Joel McGregor, who replaced Longelo with 15 minutes to play.

Three unnamed trialists were involved in the match again for Swindon, although once again there were no trialist goalkeepers in the squad as Bycroft was given the full 90 minutes.

Speaking about his hopes for this game on Tuesday, Kennedy said: “On Saturday when we played Swansea, we wanted to have a 60-30 games, but because we have had more games than training days we had to do 45-45. I would have preferred to give them 60 minutes in that game and we will do the same against Southampton on Friday.

“It doesn’t matter who they [Southampton] put out, whether it is younger players or older players, it will be similar to Saturday and I loved Saturday against Swansea because I really liked what we looked like out-of-possession.

“People get obsessed with possession and I understand that, clearly Swindon are a club that were built on that, but if you don’t have a structure and a DNA out-of-possession, trust me [it won’t go well].”