Kyle Lafferty has explained his celebration for his first Sunderland goal.
In the 64th minute of the 2-2 draw with Gillingham, Lafferty put the Black Cats one-nil up with a great header from a Denver Hume cross.
As the ball hit the back of the net the 32-year-old ran straight to the Sunderland dug-out where he picked out Sunderland's long-serving kit man John Cooke and giving him a big cuddle.
Why? Lafferty revealed the heart-warming, thoughtful reason after the game.
He said: "Yesterday we were told that Cookie's Dad died.
"Cookie is one of the boys, everyone loves him, so I said if I scored I would dedicate the goal to him and his Dad.
"I think it was only right to go over to him."
After that goal was cancelled out by Mikael Mandron, Lafferty netted again to put Sunderland 2-1 up with less than ten minutes of normal time to play.
But after six minutes were added on, Gillingham made use of all of them as former Sunderland academy graduate Mandron bagged his second in the 96th minute.
A frustrating draw for Sunderland on a day that saw Rotherham and Portsmouth both slip-up. Nevertheless, it was a very encouraging full debut for Lafferty, and a big tick on his character too after his goal celebration for Cooke.
