Towns captain Drew Forrester takes on Josh Kennedy as he lauds Bulldogs’ fight

Much of Sunday was about seeing Eagles’ legends Josh Kennedy and Mark LeCras share the field once again but for Towns there was still a game to be won.

Country allegiances run deep and not even the sight of JK and Lecca together again could make the Bulldogs’ faithful cheer for anyone in Rams colours.

On paper, it looked like a big mismatch. Towns are last with just one win while Northampton are one of the flag favourites, even without the addition of two Eagles’ premiership legends.

But Towns fought hard and the biggest cheers were still reserved for their charges as they grabbed an early lead through Callum Marquis.

Bulldog’s captain Drew Forrester put his hand up for the biggest task of the day, playing directly on Kennedy and was proud of his and his team’s effort.

“I thought I did all right, he’s a legend of the game so I’m just glad that I competed and he didn’t end up kicking a bag on me,” he said.

“It was a good game he was really good to play on and was just a good experience.”

Towns ultimately went down by 32 points, with Kennedy kicking four goals, but Forrester said there was plenty to take away from the game.

“We said that there are no expectations on this game we had a lot of confidence going into this game that we could be as competitive and bring it to them,” he said.

“Jake Chapman was phenomenal on LeCras to keep him goalless and he did everything we asked of him.

“As a back six, we didn’t want to be too JK and Lecca-focused, but we’d come out and help every chance we had and we did that really well.”