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Sunderland's official nickname is The Black Cats. They also have other nicknames, such as The Rokerites, Roker Men, the Light Brigade, the Miners, the Sols and the Mackems. After leaving Roker Park for the Stadiumof Light in 1997, the club decided that they would have a vote on the nickname to clarify the situation for the last time. The Black Cats nickname received the majority of the 11,000 votes beating off other suggestions such as the Light Brigade, the Miners, the Sols and the Mackems. There is a long historical link between black cats and Sunderland, including the "Black Cat Battery", a battery gun based on the River wier.Around the early 1800s, the southern side of the River Wear contained four gun batteries, which guarded the river mouth during the Napoleonic wars. In 1805, the battery was manned by local militia, the Sunderland loyal volenteers one of whom was a cooper by trade named Joshua Dunn. He was said to have "fled from the howling of an approaching black cat, convinced by the influence of the full moon and a warming dram or two that it was the devil incarnate". From that point onwards the John Paul Jones Battery was known as the Black Cat Battery.

A Sunderland supporter, Billy Morris, took a black cat in his top pocket as a good luck charm to the 1937 FA Cup final in which Sunderland brought home the trophy for the first time. During the 1960s a black cat lived in Roker Park and was fed and watered by the football club. Since the 1960s the emblem of the Sunderland A.F.C. Supporters Association has been a black cat.

As well as the "Team of All Talents" at the turn of the 20th century, Sunderland was also known as the "Bank of England club" during the 1950s. This was due to the club's spending on the transfer market at the time, which saw the transfer-record broken twice. At the beginning of the 2006/7 season, the purchase of the club by the Irish Drumaville consortium, the appointments ofNiall Quinn and Roy Keane to their respective roles as chairman and manager, as well as the relatively large number of Irish players in the squad led some fans to dub jokingly the team "Sund-Ireland".

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