A day after the 1-1 draw with Coventry we spoke with one fan who took the 9000 mile round trip from Vancouver Island in Canada to see Sunderland play…
We got to speak to Dan Bromley in the most unusual of ways, he actually left his bike unlocked outside of the ALS Shop while he ate a full Mackem Breakfast at our café and didn’t think anything of it. Funnily enough, he borrowed the bike off a Mag who he met in his hometown as he mentions later.
CANADA
“As a lad growing up in the 90s in Victoria, British Colombia on the West Coast of Canada. Everyone plays football; it’s the most played sport in the country. Ice hockey is the most popular, but there are more footy players all through the ages. So it is the most played sport, but not necessarily the most popular. I can’t really watch much football on TV. It’s just not covered; we didn’t even have a national league! All my mates were picking football teams whoever is in vogue at the time, so naturally it was Arsenal in the 90s. But it was just too easy to pick a big team. But under Mick McCarthy Sunderland had a pre season and came all the way to my island, Vancouver Island. They played in the capital, Victoria, where I live.”
THAT’S MY TEAM
“It was massive news for the city. It was all over our local papers, a Premier League team coming to town. So I went to that match as a young player at the time and I loved it and though, there you go, there’s my team, Sunderland. I was telling some of the guys here, I know you don’t have much love for Jon Stead! But watching him take a long ball on his chest and lay it off to an onrushing midfielder, I hadn’t seen that before! Plus he had great frosted tips didn’t he? So basically, I went to that match, I said that’s my team, and I’ve been following them ever since. There’s been lots of ups and downs.”
SUNDAY PILGRIMAGE
“I’ve been wearing my SAFC top in different places around the world, the World Cup in Brazil and everywhere. When actual Mackems meet me and they don’t hear that accent from their home town, they’re wondering what the story is. It’s been a lot of fun, and finally I got to take my ‘pilgrimage’ as one of my friends said, which is a great way to put it. There’s a lot of us exiles out there all over the world that follow, and it’s hard to find each other unless for the internet. I finally made my way over here and got the full experience of the North East hospitality on Sunday at the Coventry match. It was fantastic. We do have supporters’ groups and whatnot for teams that you can join, but certainly the matches in Canada that I attend, we just don’t have a full stadium experience like that. And also, fair play to the Coventry fans for bringing their songs and atmosphere. I always say you can’t have rivalries if the other teams doesn’t show up either. We have such a massive country in Canada that our league has the longest distance between two teams in the same league outside of the Russian Premier League!”
CANADIAN PREMIER LEAGUE
“We have a national league called the Canadian Premier League, but it’s only four years old. Before that we had teams- Vancouver Whitecaps, Montreal Impact, Toronto FC where Jozy Altidore came from. But they played in the American league. So when we put in a bid to host the World Cup, which is coming up here after Qatar, FIFA had a policy where you could only do it if you have a national league. So now we have a Premier League across the country. The goal is to bring in promotion and relegation, which isn’t in the States. We only have nine teams right now, but it’s coming. What’s nice about it is, much like what really attracts me to Sunderland is it’s football for the people. We’re seeing bids coming in now from parts of Canada that never had a professional team of any kind. They might have a lower tier team but just not professional. So now they have something to cheer for. In the CPL for example, the best fan culture that everyone knows is Halifax on the East Coast of Canada, way back over there. Just to put that into perspective, it’s longer than a six-hour 4000 km flight. It would be like you’re crossing Europe, it’s a long away day!”
UNLIKELY FRIENDS
“The club I play for back home, we were training and every once in a while, you get someone from England coming to play when someone gets wind of a decent player. If you have an accent, we’re keen to let you try out because you’re probably pretty decent! So, this guy shows up, he’s just moved to Canada on the job offer and what’s he going to wear to training? He’s got his Newcastle top on. There I am in my Sunderland top. He’s flown across the world for this try out and I’m here in a Sunderland top! He’s trying to escape the North East! I told him; I know we’re not supposed to be friends here but let’s make a go of it. We’ve stayed in touch when he moved back to England in the pandemic. So, when I came to the North East naturally I wanted to meet up with him. It’s been a lot of fun and there’s been some good banter of course, he definitely gets his digs in! But I’ve told him and I’ve told many other people, it could have been any club that came. Still to this day, no other English club has come to my home town. “
MORE THAN A GAME
“I get it, it’s so hard to get there. You fly all this way and then you have to get a very long ferry trip just to get on the island. It’s another like five hours onto the journey and your players are going to be tired so you’re probably not going to go. It meant the world that SAFC came to my home town and I was saying to Chris Waters, don’t discredit the value in these pre-season trips. There are probably other fans like me who are looking for a team, and we just don’t have a connection like family from England or whatever. Everyone finds their story with football.”
ONE CITY, ONE CLUB
“I know it’s not necessarily common in England to have a city like Sunderland to just have one football club. Certainly, further south, it’s much more mixed. There’s a local lad called Johnny, and then a lad came up from Durham. His name is Sean. Then there’s another two guys who sorted me out with a ticket and came up from Sheffield, Joe and Prentice. They were great and got me tickets, front row seats right in the thick of it. It was awesome and I had so much fun. We had a night out and it was hard to keep up with those guys! I ended up losing my code to get into the hotel room, so they were like ‘no problem, just come and crash with us!’ So I crashed out with the guy I just met six hours ago, it was hilarious! We all woke up at 3am and couldn’t wait for the match to start. Just couldn’t sleep but it was great. I went for a rainy walk around the town just to get the anxiety out.”
POSITIVE
“My thoughts prior to the match were confirmed by Sunday’s showing. Coventry are a good side as I’ve been hearing from interviews, it’s a great team to model after. They got promoted and built from what they needed and consolidated, now they’re in for play-offs. I think we’re not that far behind that. There wasn’t a lot of Championship experience in our side, was there? But that first half shows we can go toe-to-toe. There’s a Swedish international on the other side who puts the ball in the net but there’s nothing you can do about that.”
EXPECTATION/HOPES
“My thoughts are mid table that would be brilliant. You do see teams getting double promoted, I have a Southampton fan back home who tells me that. They’re still there, but is there a fear of going up too soon?”
EMBLETON AND DAN NEIL
“I was really pleased; we were all chuffed to see Embo playing. Dan Neil started, and we love these guys. Embo is probably my favourite player. Him and Dan Neil are both two-footed, I play centre mid back home. I Love a good two-footed player, so I love to see those boys hit them in with both feet from the middle of the park, it’s a joy. Obviously they are academy products and I have a lot of pride in that. In some ways Embleton is the one with all the experience. He’s been promoted twice now, two years in a row, he’s proven it. It’s refreshing how likeable the side is. Seeing Jack Clarke say how much he wanted to come back and play. One of my mates in Canada is a Spurs supporter from England, and it’s nice to see him really happy for Clarke getting his career going again.”
SUNDERLAND FRIENDLY IN ‘05
“It was a BC all-star team that played Sunderland, so they patched together former professionals, university players, and I mean they held on, they did ok but of course that was they’re biggest match of their lives. I looked back on newspaper articles from that era and they only had a couple of training sessions. “
FAMILIAR FACES
“What’s funny about that tour is former SAFC player Carl Robinson I think he was a centre mid at the time he went on to become Vancouver White caps Head Coach for quite a long time and following that team when it got a birth in Major League Soccer which was shortly after he was our first successful coach was great, knowing that he was a Sunderland player at one time. We had a great era with him, some of my fondest memories of watching the Whitecaps with him. A player that he signed, Pa-Modou Kah who was Norwegian, he’s from West Africa but a Norwegian citizen. He got his first full coaching job at Pacific FC in my hometown club Victoria who won the title last year and now he’s got a big move to the States in the Dallas system so it’s nice to see these little stories. Steven Caldwell was playing for Victoria and he’s a pundit now. Football brings people together does it not so it’s fun to see these connections over the years.”
INCLUSION
“I didn’t know Sunderland was the first to have the sensory room for fans with different challenges to watch matches, as a new parent myself, who knows if my kids will have those challenges one day and knowing how mad people are for football if there’s something that would prevent someone from watching a match that’s super sad so seeing that and hearing that since there’s been other clubs that have adopted this I think that’s just brilliant, I would love to see that in the Canadian Premier League. Things like that make me even more proud to call Sunderland my club.”
