I know mate. If I am fortunate enough to have grandchildren it would be weird if they called me safcdrum.
Mine comes from a Sunderland winger in the '20's called Billy Death. I just found the name amazing. I've had a few Billy guises although it's not my real name.
My Grandfather, who was around then, has told me about Billy Death. He reckons the crowd used to shout "Death, where is thy sting?" at him. Which shows a much greater knowledge of hymns and churchgoing than you'd expect from a football crowd now..
When I was living in Brazil in 1998/1999, I rocked up to a school not speaking a word of Portuguese (just Spanish), so it made it tough to integrate with the other kids in the playground. Football was a religion there, so you could get by on the pitch at lunch with hand signals and scoring goals. But on the same day I started there was a kid from Sunderland who had rocked up with his family who had moved down for work, and they didn't speak Portuguese either. So we stuck together. He was Sunderland daft, and I followed footie with a local Brazilian team (Vasco Da Gama - who humped Man Utd after they'd won the Treble btw) and Scotland were in the World Cup (Last bloody time they've been in a comp aswell the useless bastards haha). So the footie talk was Vasco & Sunderland. And because of Scotland I loved Allan Johnston, who at the time played for Sunderland, so I started following them. When he left I'd already fallen in love with the club, and even leaving Brazil to move to Nigeria and boarding school in Scotland, I kept up with the Lads, and here I am almost 20 years later still getting my heart beaten black and blue by them. I didn't have to choose Sunderland, and I didn't have to stick with them. I could have gone with Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea - but there was something about the club from the North East that just got under my skin. Been to Sunderland a few times, but only been able to make one match at the SoL (vs Coventry in 2007), but the club, the fans, and the area are in my heart.
Was at a training course just outside of Nottingham in a place called Bottesford for 7 weeks in 2007, and we did work every Monday - Friday, and an exam on the Saturday. Sunday was normally the only day off, but work liked to keep us close for extra training and ****. But the weekend of the Coventry match was the one weekend we got Saturday and Sunday off, so I made sure I could get to the match. Left early and everything, and paid a fortune on a train ticket to get there, and loved it. Good crowd, Keano in charge with Edwards and Yorke scoring the goals. So, im at a 100% win/loss ratio of matches ive attended then! Only thing I didn't like was sitting in Newcastle train station for ages wearing a Sunderland top and scarf, getting abuse from the local skunks, but didn't care as I was proud to be wearing the red & White after my first match haha
Juat another wierd way of ending up supporting a football club. Travelling 6,000 across the world to do so!
Ive spent my whole life travelling around, and with work I end up in some places where tourists will never go, but one universal language is football. As cliche as it sounds, you can talk football with anyone and instantly have something in common. Unfortunately for me, in Asia they all support Liverpool, Manu, Arsenal, Chelsea or Citeh. They all laugh at me when I Sunderland, asking why I support a team who never wins anything. They don't seem to understand why I would do that. I ask why they support Liverpool, or City (they even change teams each year), and they all say because they win trophy's, or so and so plays for them (and they will follow that player around).
Ojo del Gato Negro - Porque hablo espanol BB-8 - because Star Wars (and it was much shorter than my previous and even subsequent usernames) Blame it on Eboue - because I wanted someone to blame it on (oh how i wanted to sing that at a match) and I love MJ - but not in a bedtime Jesus juice kind of way. ZLATAN - Schwarz and Larsson will always be Sunderland's Swedish heroes to me but there's just something about Zlatan. The ego, the ability, i dunno but an avatar and username is as close as I'll ever get.
I was The Outlaw Jozy, and wrathofpaulmcgrath before that. The Outlaw Jozy thing had to do with the movie and of course Altidore coming to the club. Clever. I dropped the Jozy part because I didn't want to suffer an Internet death, as anyone named after Jozy on a SAFC forum will. Pure cowardice.
Should the first bit not be 'Ojos del gato negro' . . . . or am I not as fluent (in a pigeon sort of way) as I thought
I might be wrong, man . . . . I asked for my own benefit, because I speak the language (like a pigeon) and it doesn't look right to me I can learn new tricks, you know
