Supporters and Rivalries
Sunderland held the seventh highest average home attendance out of the 20 clubs in the Premier League at the end of the 2011–12 season with an average of 39,095. The club has many supporter groups from various countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and Cambodia.
The club has an official monthly subscription magazine, called the Legion of Light, which season ticket holders receive for no cost. One of the club's current fanzine is A Love Supreme. Others in the past have been It's The Hope I Can't Stand, It's An Easy One For Norman/It's An Easy One For Given, Sex and Chocolate, Wise Men Say and The Roker Roar (later The Wearside Roar).
Traditionally, Sunderland's main rivals are Newcastle United, with whom they compete for the Tyne–Wear derby. The club were rivals with fellow Sunderland-based team, Sunderland Albion, in the 1880s and 1890s. The clubs met in the FA Cup in the third qualifying round; Sunderland, however, withdrew from the competition to deny Albion a share of the gate receipts. In the same season the clubs were drawn again in the Durham Challenge Cup; in a ploy again to prevent Albion from gaining money from the ticket sales, Sunderland proposed that the gate money be donated to charity. Albion declined and Sunderland won the match 2–0. Sunderland achieved their first victory over Newcastle United at home in 28 years, when they won the derby in the 2008–09 season
Read more about this topic: Sunderland A.F.C.
Famous quotes containing the word supporters:
“No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)