Sunderland to show their support for poppy appeal

Sunderland Football Club will show their support for Remembrance Day this weekend when they take on Coventry City at the Stadium of Light. Sunderland players will wear specially designed shirts with poppies printed on them to show their respect for British service men and women.

These highly exclusive one-off shirts will then be auctioned on safc.com via a link up with QXL and all money raised will be donated to the Royal British Legion Fund which this year aims to raise £22million to fund the Legion's welfare and resettlement work for an eligible 5.5million ex-service people.

Sunderland AFC's Communications Director, Lesley Callaghan said:

" Millions of people wear poppies leading up to Remembrance Day as a small but significant gesture which helps us remember the British service men and women who have been killed or injured in active service.

" As a Club we wanted to show our respect to servicemen and our support for the work of the Royal British Legion.

" I think it is great that the players have been able to wear poppies and we would like to thank Washington Badge who printed the shirts and QXL who are auctioning the shirts as both companies offered their services free of charge".

After Saturday's game all players in the 20-man squad for SAFC will autograph their genuine match shirt for auction. The auction will be live from Friday 7th November and bidding will close at 8pm on Friday 14th November. Anyone wanting to bid should log onto safc.com.

As well as the shirt tribute the club have also granted access to the Royal British Legion to carry out a collection at the game and are donating some tickets to service men and women and their families.