The Dons are competing in the inaugural eScottish Football Cup at Hampden Park this Sunday, 21 May!

AFC will be represented by two boyhood Aberdeen fans, Donald and David in a competition played out amongst teams from across Scotland for a Prize Pool of £50,000!

The players were selected at qualifying tournament held by our Partners, Belong Gaming, in April with David coming out on top in the FUT competition and Donald winning out in the Kick-Off mode.

The players will be kitted out in our first ever official esports kit, and the players came down to Pittodrie for a special preview of the kit yesterday.

The tournament will be live on the eRena Twitch on Sunday, and you can follow the latest tournament news here.

Q: Donald you want to kick us off and just tell us a little bit about your background in esports?

Donald: So initially my background in esports came when I first started doing ePremier League. I tried qualify for a few teams unfortunately never succeeded always fell the final hurdle. I just decided I wanted to keep trying and as soon as an opportunity to play for the Club which I have supported since I was young, I was always going to take it. I wanted to try to get there and make a name for myself.

David: Like Donald, I came quite close in the ePremierLeague but couldn’t make it because of work. As I play on Xbox, it can be a struggle sometimes, I can’t compete in the Playstation events, the main stuff.

Q: And how did you find out about the tournament?

David: Yeah, just on the AFC Twitter, so I knew I wanted to take part straight away.

Q: Donald you mentioned you’re an Aberdeen fan? What does it mean to represent the club?

Donald: It’s, massive you know, Aberdeen is a family club. And so it means what it would to everybody, you know, growing up supporting and watching them in order to represent them? It’s just massive. So if there’s any way in any form, we can represent the club in this day and age, it’s great.

Q: And David for yourself you’re a Season Ticket Holder?

David: Yeah, got my Season Ticket in the Red Shed and I try go to Home and Away games, as much again as I can. Just such a good opportunity to represent the club some extent. It’s quite a proud moment definitely.

Q: And what do you guys make of the jersey for this weekend?

David: Really good actually, was quite surprised we’d get a special kit for this, but obviously appreciate it. It’s great to have the support of the sponsors, Adidas and Belong to help provide us with this.

Donald: Yeah, agree with David really, it’s smart and a fun design that the guys have gone for, again it feels pretty special to be the first people to ever wear an esports kit for AFC.

Q: Donald, you’ve had a bit of success in a couple of our previous esports tournaments, Can you tell us a bit about that?

Donald: Yeah, I came to the first event, where I fell short unfortunately, but played much better in the second one. I came flying through all the qualifying and got through to the Quarter Finals at the Beach Ballroom. Made it into the final, unfortunately, lost in that one but I was quite happy with the result. Because my daughter got a gaming chair out of it, that’s all she wanted! But you know the competition was strong and I mean, both David and I were the only two to go who both went undefeated through these qualifiers, and I lost to him in the FUT final. Then within the kickoff mode, only lost one game, came down to a playoff. And obviously got here by winning that, which felt great.

Q: And David, can you tell me a bit about the format for Sunday, how it works:

David: It’s an aggregate score between the two of us, in a group stage to start, And then four teams that go through. And then it’s knockout after that, so hopefully we can do as best as we can get. We’ve got a tough group, it’s definitely gonna be difficult, but we will give it our best and you never know!

Q: Finally Donald, how do you think esports and events like this can help the club reach new fans?

Donald: Gaming is becoming a big part of the culture for younger fans. esports when I first started, was non existent to an extent but now it’s going to reach a wider audience. I’m 30 this year. So, you know, even people in my age, there’s still opportunities there for them to compete throughout the next however many years and it’s only going to grow bigger and bigger, with more competitions, within Scotland with the clubs and hopefully it also helps get more fans interested in following Aberdeen.