• The forums will be unavailable for a few hours on Saturday 6th June, when they do return they will initially be in a degraded state with some features missing, but normal posting/reading will be possible. The main website will not be affected by these updates.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.

The Sunderland supporters branch trying to change the history of Athletic Bilbao

What we know:

Miners from Sunderland were involved in the first football match in Bilbao. At least two or three of the steamships which came over were registered in Sunderland.

The sunderland daily echo did a match report for this and is mentioned on Athletic's website.

William Llewellyn Dyer, born in Sunderland. Believed to have had a hand in the formation of Athletic Bilbao. Also played for them. Took over the family business of minerals when his father died and did business between Bilbao, Sunderland and County Durham.

Sevilla ordered 50 red and white shirts from Sunderland in 1908/1909 through an Irish player who had connections with people in Sunderland. Sevilla needed them for a charity match and would adopt those colours provided they arrived in time. They never turned up meaning Sevilla stuck with their original colours and the 50 red and white shirts remained missing somewhere.

1910 Athletic send their young directors, who were also students, to England to buy blue and white of Blackburn Rovers as those were their original colours. However, they could not find enough blue and white shirts to take back meaning they had to think of a plan b.

Whilst waiting to board the ship back to Bilbao in Southampton, they came across a shop with 50 red and white shirts, which were more similar to the ones Sunderland wore at the time, not like Southampton.

Could these have been the shirts that Sevilla ordered but didn't arrive and then got stored in Southampton? We believe so. In 1910 Southampton were a southern league team and not as well known as first division teams like Sunderland.

What would be the chances of walking into a shop in Southampton in 1910 and having 50 red and white Southampton shirts to sell? 🧐🤔

The logical thing is that Athletic picked up the red and white shirts made for Sevilla but got them in Southampton before boarding the ship to go back to Bilbao.

There is also a confusion between the pronunciation of Sunderland and Southampton. To older generations, Sunderland and Southampton were mixed up with Sunderland being called Sutherland
harryCLSsafc said:
My dad used to run safcs website freelance in the 1990s to 2002 just after I was born

He told me that Micky gray was going to get a testimonial and they had Sunderland lined up to play Bilbao at the sol

The only problem wsd that when safc approached Bilbao about the game and the links Bilbao had no knowledge of safc in its founding history

Safc asked my dad to look into it and he could find no evidence of Bilbao links with wearside. Who Fred pentland was who was supposedly involved in this foundation is anyone’s guess and my dad reckons they got mixed up with a bloke who used to play for Middlesbrough who went on to be Bilbaos manager. He was called pentland

I note that no one on the telly now mentions Bilbao and safc if Bilbao are on the telly. Probably because every man and his dog has now looked into this link and found nothing
Click to expand...

There are several links between Bilbao Sunderland and County Durham
You must be logged on to see external links

For those that speak Spanish, read this article. If you want it in English, open link in Google chrome, click 3 dots top right, translate and then choose English
 
Last edited:

lets get some perspective in 1910 Sunderland along with Aston Villa were the most successful teams in the land. Southampton were in the southern league and didn't play league football until 1920 with the formation of league three. Do people really think all be it a shop in Southampton would have a stock of 50 Southampton shirts?.It also sounds a little incredulous that seamstresses in Spain couldn't knock up a few football shirts though.
 
Last edited:
According to this, Southampton wore blue shorts up until the 50’s. Their kit is closer to Athletic Madrid.
You must be logged on to see external links
 
Honess10 said:
Who gives a shit 🤷🏻‍♂️ not to be rude or owt but does it matter if some people from Sunderland were involved or not?
Click to expand...

We're an official overseas supporters branch therefore we want to represent the club in the best way possible. We already have a large number of members who are from Bilbao or surrounding areas and are keen to follow us and find out more.

In other words, we are recruiting fans of Athletic Bilbao and the other Basque teams to actually become fans of our team. That's something that's worth giving a shit about don't you think?

3 of the Basque members will be in attendance for the game against Hull next month.

Jonny, Mark and myself will also be over for that one and the Birmingham game.

Looking forward to meeting up with sole of you!
 
Thought the link was busted years ago like. From what I’ve read it’s Southampton and Bilbao. Seville is the Sunderland link and they are better anyway!!
 
AgnewsHorseshoe said:
Thought the link was busted years ago like. From what I’ve read it’s Southampton and Bilbao. Seville is the Sunderland link and they are better anyway!!
Click to expand...

No.

If you read the articles, you'll see.

Since the publication on social media this afternoon, several people have contacted us to compare findings as they to believe it's sunderland and not Southampton
 
Oli Wagkz said:
Thought it was well known it’s Sevilla we have links with and not Bilbao
Click to expand...
Sevilla ordered red and white shirts from Sunderland througu a Scottish player they had playing for them. The shirts needed to arrive before a certain date for a charity match. They didn't arrive so Sevilla stuck with their original shirts. What happened to those red and white shirts they ordered? They remained missing until a year later when Athletic Bilbao came across 50 red and white shirts in the port in Southampton.

We believe Athletic Bilbao picked up these shirts and assumed they were Southampton but actually they were Sunderland and the ones that didn't get to Sevilla
 
Finally worked out how the get them translated.

The article about the Bilbao Black Cats is class and its great to see some Leones fans embracing it too (even a Txuri Urdin too!)

The link seems a lot more legit to us than Southampton, hopefully its something that gets more air time and recognition! Poignantly I sit here waiting to go to the match with a Athletic Club shirt as my base layer and a 98/99 away shirt over the top of a hoody!

Aupa Sunderland :cool:
 
That's nowt, the mags can boast that Juventus got their strips from them the mags of Notts county that is
 
Sparta Rotterdam is the correct answer



The club continued to exist, however, and in 1899 the board of Sparta visited a match of
You must be logged on to see external links
. Impressed with the red-and-white jersey of the English club, the board decided that Sunderland's colours (red-white striped jersey, black shorts) would henceforth be the colours of Sparta.
 
I'm sure I read somewhere that red and white material was widely used to make mattress covers in Spain therefore red and white material was relatively cheap around the time the club was founded.
 
Basically, we were the blueprint of every good side in the world.
Every Nation’s Navy is based off of the Royal Navy. Every newly born club wanted to be like the team of all talents and based themselves off of us.
I guess I’m saying that everyone loves the lads. Even Maradona was fuming he couldn’t play in the famous red and white stripes.
 
harryCLSsafc said:
My dad used to run safcs website freelance in the 1990s to 2002 just after I was born

He told me that Micky gray was going to get a testimonial and they had Sunderland lined up to play Bilbao at the sol

The only problem wsd that when safc approached Bilbao about the game and the links Bilbao had no knowledge of safc in its founding history

Safc asked my dad to look into it and he could find no evidence of Bilbao links with wearside. Who Fred pentland was who was supposedly involved in this foundation is anyone’s guess and my dad reckons they got mixed up with a bloke who used to play for Middlesbrough who went on to be Bilbaos manager. He was called pentland

I note that no one on the telly now mentions Bilbao and safc if Bilbao are on the telly. Probably because every man and his dog has now looked into this link and found nothing
Click to expand...

Are you Harry as in ‘My Boy Harry’?

Fred Pentland wasn’t involved in Bilbao’s foundation - he did manage them though. Ended his career at Barrow.
 
Fantastic club. My dad was there in 94 and says it's one of his best memories following NUFC even though we lost. Fans got on great together and was like a carnival he always said. Was lovely having them here again in the summer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top