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, Cambodia, and Greece.
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 two main rivals are Newcastle United, with whom they compete for the Tyne–Wear derby. The club was 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
Sunderland have affiliations with Ghanaian club Asante Kotoko and Belgian side Lierse S.K..
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Famous quotes containing the word supporters:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)