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OKC's Morgan Day Named Queen of East Belfast, Friendship Between Greens and Glens Forged

By Tyler Vaughn, 05/01/20, 8:00AM CDT

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This is the unlikely story of how a local woman quickly rose to royalty and a bond was formed—from over 4,000 miles away.

Through the power of Twitter, an unsuspecting Oklahoma City citizen was named the Queen of East Belfast. Morgan Day, the Inbound Marketing Director at BigWing, was quietly working from home when a social media storm struck.

“I got one random tweet from a gentleman named Matt See, and I just said 'Thanks, stranger' and figured that would be it for the day," said Day.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

As it turns out, Morgan Day has been celebrated by the Glentoran Football Club faithful every April 23 for the last 15 years. On that day in 2005, Chris Morgan famously scored a late, match-winning goal to down their arch rivals from South Belfast, Linfield FC.


Chris Morgan scores for Glentoran against Linfield April 23, 2005. Photo courtesy of Glentoran FC.

It didn’t take long before Morgan’s Twitter mentions snowballed, with Glens from all over reaching out. Before she knew it, Morgan was making appearances on news outlets, including the BBC!

Within 24 hours of the commencement of her reign, Morgan even had her own Glentoran shirt, scarf and book. Alan White, who moved from Belfast, Ireland to the United States to play college soccer at Oklahoma City University, saw what was transpiring and quickly reached out.

“Some friends back home start shooting me messages asking if I know this woman in Oklahoma City named Morgan Day. Well, Oklahoma City is a pretty big place. [Laughs] When I got home, I started looking at it and tweeted Morgan to let her know I have a shirt, scarf and book.”

You might think “There’s no way I’m letting some stranger from the internet come over and give me a gift,” but Morgan did her due diligence.

“One of the last photos Alan posted was of him getting his National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum t-shirts, and when I saw that, I knew he was good guy. I could tell he wasn’t an internet troll and that I could trust him enough to give him my address.”

It didn’t take long before someone referenced Morgan’s local team to which she replied by proudly showing off her Energy FC jersey!

“I’m a very relaxed, casual soccer fan and don’t know the rules, but I enjoy the games. I always root for the home team and love supporting Energy FC!”

"Someone then tweeted Energy FC to arrange a friendly and you all jumped in and it went brilliantly from there," said White. "The whole organic nature of the thing is fantastic."

The big occasion even earned a shoutout from the man himself.

To show just how small a place the world truly is, Head Coach John Pascarella saw what was happening and chimed in with his connection to Belfast and Glentoran!

Whether you call it football, soccer, calcio or something else, it really is the world’s game, and it can’t come back soon enough. For now, we’ll find joy in our newfound friendship and look forward to the day when we can honor the Queen of East Belfast and her newly-appointed Hand of the Queen at Taft Stadium. And perhaps, one day at the Oval as well.

Morgan and Alan were kind enough to hop on our official podcast, Off Pitch, to share the story. You can listen to the podcast here or watch below!