The Sunderland fans have been unbearable at Great Annual Savings Group (GAS) all week!
Our Black Cats supporting colleagues have been rightfully excited to see the new kits, but have a little longer to wait before the club reveals the 2020/21 designs.
Until then, the excitement will continue to build. We have interviewed some of the Group’s biggest Lads fans to share why the red and white runs deep at GAS.
Name: Josh Green
Role: IT Technician
Age: 23
Earliest SAFC memory
Around the age of seven or eight I remember being at the match with my Grandad and cousins being absolutely freezing. I can’t remember much of the matches that far back, but I do remember the bag of sweets and burger van burgers on the way to the game!
Favourite ever SAFC player
Other than his debut, Jan Kirchhoff was one of the most talented I’ve watched in person. Once he was settled in his passing and distribution were on another level. I wish he’d been fitter and stayed a little longer to play a bigger part.
Favourite SAFC goal
Maybe a little more obvious than my previous answer, but it has to be Jermain Defoe’s volley against Newcastle in 2015. It was an absolute screamer. Limbs all over. It doesn’t take much more explaining than that.
Favourite match
Back in sixth form, the club ran a competition to win tickets for the match against Cardiff City. I got a call from my cousin, Liam, to see if I could try to grab some tickets from Durham City Centre. That’s where they were running the competition and I studied there so I nipped out to find Samson and Delilah “hiding” somewhere. It turns out two giant stuffed cats in 5XL Sunderland kits aren’t that hard to find and I bagged the tickets. The match itself was fantastic and we smashed Cardiff 4-0; a scoreline I haven’t witnessed too many times in my lifetime. We were sat up in the Premier Concourse, but the atmosphere was electric as we climbed out of the bottom three late in the season in the great escape.
Favourite kit
I’ve always thought Nike made our best kits. I was too young to appreciate this one at the time, but the 2000 -2002 Nike home shirt with the v-neck was smart looking back. It makes it a bit better when the likes of Super Kev and Quinny were banging them in wearing it.
Let’s hope this season’s Nike shirt has the same effect on the team!
We’ll be featuring a few more GAS massive Lads fans over the next couple of weeks.