When I was a younger, the term " Geordie" was a catch all for almost everyone in the North East from say, south Durham upwards Sunderland supporters used to sing about being Geordies. If anyone from the North East travelled to other parts, ( and not just this country) others would usually refer to them as Geordies. I'd say up until the early nineties this was still broadly the case, and I moved around enough back then to know. A Geordie is not a Saudi supporter, that is a corruption of the word by John Hall. It was made to whip up the gullible masses, alongside his ridiculous, boiler plate rhetoric about the "Geordie Nation". He needed to whip up interest, float the club on the Stock Exchange, get his money, and get out. Of all fan bases, anywhere under the blue sky, only they would have fallen for it, just as they have fallen for the Saudi heist. Worth saying here, that Hall and his odious son did not use any of the money they made in renewing the season tickets which they once both had at Sunderland!
"Toon" is indeed, as a word in itself, another confection arising from the Hall era. Further manipulation of a lazy press.
John Hall used to live in Thornhill Terrace in Sunderland for a good few years and Douglas Hall went to Thornhill School (he was in Brydon House, if I remember right). Both of the were season ticket holder in the Clock Stand at Roker in the late 70s - early 80s. They only really stopped when he became part of the consortium that was trying to buy the mags from the Seymours and McKeags. Hall wasn't the main bloke in it though, just a relatively small part, but he gradually forced others out and made it about him. With lickarses like John Gibson helping him rewrite history it makes him look like a life long mag, when the truth is he's a very lucky opportunist. I was told, many years ago, that he was supposed to have tried to get involved with us a few years before he took over the mags, and it was that that got some of the others to get him involved with that consortium.
