Greetings, Mackems!
By: Lucas | July 23rd, 2007My name is Lucas, and I am a Sunderland supporter. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I am still a relative newcomer to The Beautiful Game (please don’t hate me if I call it soccer, which I will do more often than not). Here’s how I ended up writing in this space (for which I am very grateful to Bob, the Poobah of soccer-blogging):
I have been following Sunderland AFC for about 2 years now, ever since they came to the Pacific Northwest on a pre-season tour and played against the Portland Timbers (who, it should be known, are my first footie love). There were about 500 Mackems that followed the team to British Columbia, Seattle and Portland, and during the few days that they were here, mingling and carousing with the Timbers Army, a real bond of friendship was formed.
A year later, in the spring of 2006, about 3 dozen of us made the reciprocal trip and spent a week in the northeast of England. There, I got to see the Black Cats earn a fantastic 0-0 draw at Old Trafford, and, one of the biggest thrills in my experience as a sports fan, attended the Wear-Tyne derby at the beautiful Stadium of Light (which, unfortunately, ended badly for SAFC). This clinched the deal, and from that moment I began to consider myself a Mackem (though I’m still less than clear on the etymology of the term).
To make a long story slightly shorter: I watched with joy last season as Quinn and Keane took the reins and guided the team to a brilliant league title and promotion back to the EPL. When I saw last week that there was a vacancy at the Sunderland Offside, I seized my chance. So here I am.
I hope you who read this spot will give me leeway for my American accent and my as-yet-incomplete knowledge of the sport (I have now been intensely following soccer for just over 4 years), and I hope to learn a bit about football and blogging, and blogging about football. Most of all I hope you will enjoy reading about the Red & White as much as I enjoy writing about them. Your comments are always welcome.
Ha’way, Mackems!
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Comments
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Nah, you should be fine. Nice story, btw. Welcome to the fold.
Posted from
United States
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Hello Lucas, welcome to a brand new rollercoaster named Sunderland AFC. You are more than welcome as a new Safc fan, i will refer to you as an adopted Mackem, which btw is a local slang which you may vividly remember during your brief trip here, is an adaptation from our shipbuilding days which sadly came to an end on wearside in the Nineties, although a few small shipwrights still remain.
The term Mackem derived from “make them and take them” although if you use our accent it translates as “Mackem and Tackem” the “Mackem” being linked via the Shipbuilding and obv the “Tackem” as they were taken away.
Anyway once again welcome and come back to the North East again soon, there is always a pint waiting!
Dean
{http://sunderlandafc.blogspot.com}Posted from
United Kingdom
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