Sport
The only professional sporting team in Sunderland is the football team, Sunderland A.F.C., which was formed in 1879. Finishing 10th in the Premier League in the 2010-11 season, Sunderland retained its status in the country's top division in 2011-12 and plays home games at the 49,000 seat capacity Stadium of Light.
Sunderland also has the north-east's top women's football team, Sunderland A.F.C. Women, who have been financially separated from the men's team since summer 2005. They currently play in the top tier of English women's football - FA Women's Premier League National Division, despite their financial struggles.
Sunderland's longest stadium occupancy so far was of Roker Park for 99 years beginning in 1898, with relocation taking place due to the stadium's confined location and the need to build an all-seater stadium. The initial relocation plan had been for a stadium to be situated alongside the Nissan factory, but these were abandoned in favour of the Stadium of Light at Monkwearmouth on the site of a colliery that had closed at the end of 1993.
Since the dissolution of Sunderland Nissan F.C. the City now has only one non-league side, Sunderland Ryhope Community Association F.C. who now play in the Northern League Division One after a successful promotion campaign in the 2009/10 season. MMA fighter Ian "The Machine" Freeman also hails from Sunderland.
Read more about this topic: City Of Sunderland
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)