A bit about you:
Name: Mark Kennedy
Current home town: Northampton Birthplace: Northampton
How long have you supported your team? Since I can remember. I moved to the suburbs of Abington when I was four and remember seeing the floodlights of the County Ground dominating the skyline. That was my first real curiosity about football and I have followed the team ever since.
Overview of your club:
Favourite thing about your home ground: The fans that I meet before, during and after the game.
Favourite match played by your team & why: An obvious choice for many Cobblers fans would be the 1-0 play off win at Wembley in 1997. We live that as much as an English fans lives on the 1966 World Cup.
Favourite player of all time who played for your club: I have had too many favourites to mention. Of old, Tony Adcock would feature highly. Currently, although not playing now, I have got to know Sean Parrish and Ian Sampson (played in the 90s, but now on the coaching team). They are total inspirations to younger footballers and awesome when in contact with the fans.
About our forthcoming match against you:
Your favourite current player in your squad and why? Adebayo Akinfenwa is a great character both on and off the pitch and connects really well with the fans (plus scores a few as well). Manager Stuart Gray deserves a mention too, great personality at the club.
Player in your squad we should most fear and why? Probably Bayo, as he will cause quite a few problems up front. Danny Jackman is always 100% committed as well.
Player in our squad you most fear and why? I think I would fear pretty much everyone in the Leicester squad personally. The Foxes still have what looks like a Championship squad and are so far doing what other heavyweights at this level have failed to at the first attempt (Forest, Leeds).
Up and coming prospect in your squad? Stuart Gray has the ability to dabble in the loan market and pick up some excellent loan signings. At the moment we have a good keeper in Frank Fielding from Blackburn and Mark Little from Wolves. As for our own players, Alex Dyer looks a good prospect, but is not featuring much at the moment.
Where do you think you’ll finish this season? If you ask any Cobblers fans this you would get anywhere between low mid table to play offs. I would say we would do about the same as last season, around 9th.
How do you think you’ll do against us? I think it will be a very tough game for us at the Walkers Stadium, but after going to Bolton and Sunderland in the Carling Cup (2-1 & 2-2), we proved that we can play on the big stage this season. In our previous experiences, we normally freeze in the big match atmosphere, but I think we'll put on a good display. I would like to think that we'll nick a famous victory at both the Walkers and Sixfields so I can have bragging rights over some mates. Whatever happens, we can't do any worse that we did in our last visit to Filbert Street in 1999, maybe we'll even get a free kick this time. That was the only game I could imagine in history where a team wasn't awarded a free kick, we were dire on the day. Here's hoping for a 5-4 Cobblers win!
Any other comments? Leicester is one of those soft spot teams for me as I have some good friends who are Foxes, so there will be plenty at stake in our post match pints on Saturday. I think it is sad that the Foxes have dropped to the third tier, but it makes the fans see and appreciate other clubs who don't have/never had the money to splash on over paid players.
I run the Northampton Town's fans team too and we have met up with Leicester on three occasions in the past (five by the end of this season I'm sure) and they are one of the best bunch of lads to play against in the way of spirit. Anyway, I have been nice enough about Leicester now, I'm going to start dreaming of six points from you now! Up the Cobblers!