‘Philly Ray’ is the biggest Eagles fan in Arizona

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – There’s never been a better time to be a guy named “Philly Ray” in the greater Phoenix area.

All week long — it actually started last week, he says — locals, tourists, reporters, and longtime buddies have been coming to Rockbar on Craftsman Court in this golfing town to shake Ray Poserina’s hand or give him a fist bump with a “Go Birds.” The Northeast Philly native, a metalhead with long hair and a horseshoe mustache, is stoked.

“You kidding me? I’m like a kid in a candy store this week,” Poserina, 57, said Monday afternoon after finishing up a television interview at the bar. “The Birds are in the Super Bowl and they’re here.”

Poserina, a lifelong fan, grew up on Canterbury Road in the Morrell Park section of Northeast Philly and went to Archbishop Ryan. Anytime he started to go into detail about his life, though, another Eagles fan approached.

“It is the greatest week of Ray’s life,” said Sharlyn Kanney, a former Doylestown resident. “And it’s great for us, too, because we get to watch him experience that.”

An hour earlier, Poserina had posted photos of the new shirts he had made for Eagles West, the fan club he helped start in 2014, and local fans were popping into the bar to buy them.

“My man,” he said to one customer. “I got the 3x just for you. I got you. Come with me, my man.”

Poserina moved to Arizona in the early ‘90s after meeting a woman at a bar near Ocean City. She invited him to follow her out there.

“I had always wanted to go West,” he said. “So I went and I never left.”

Now happily married to a different Arizonan, Lori, and living in Mesa, Poserina works in the admissions department of a “major university” in the Phoenix area. His boss, knowing it’s Super Bowl week, has been very understanding, he said. The Birds are a higher calling.

“Boss is very, very cool,” he said. “Thank God.”

Rockbar’s journey to becoming an “Eagles” bar is a simple one. In every city in America, fans of certain NFL teams try to congregate to watch a game together. There’s Green Bay Packers bars in Nashville, Pittsburgh Steelers bars in Florida, and there’s Kansas City bars in both Scottsdale and in Philly. Poserina said one of his favorite Scottsdale bars to watch the Birds closed, so he approached Alex Mundy, owner of Rockbar, in 2012 with a proposal.

Mundy grew up in Oklahoma City. He was a Buffalo Bills fan. Two things about Poserina’s idea struck him. He had just opened the bar, a live music venue, and needed all the business he could get.

“I also grew up hating the Cowboys,” Mundy said. “I still hate them.”

In 2018, when the Eagles beat Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, Poserina was at Rockbar behind the DJ booth. He has his own intro song, like professional wrestlers do in the WWE. It’s AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”

“On Sunday, I’ll time it with the music and say ‘Kansas City, you’ve been thunderstruck,’ ” he said.

When Brady’s Hail Mary bounced off the turf at the end of Super Bowl LII, Poserina was at Rockbar, of course, and may have lost touch with reality for a second or two.

“I’m telling you, my man, everything went silent and I leaned against the wall and was thinking ‘oh my God, the Eagles just won the Super Bowl,‘ ” he said.

Poserina said there’s a core unit of 300 members in Eagles West and that number balloons to a thousand on game day. When Philadelphia fan groups like Green Legion or M & J Travel organize road trips to away games, like they did for the Eagles’ tight win over Arizona in October, Rockbar becomes a destination. Fans spill out onto the street on those weekends, or pack shoulder-to-shoulder at the roof bar.

Many of the Eagles fans who actually live in the Phoenix area are snowbirds, traveling back and forth from Philly or the Jersey Shore to chase warm weather. It was 65 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze in Scottsdale Monday. Summers are triple digits, so the snowbirds head to Avalon or Wildwood.

Poserina returned to Philly in 2018 for the parade, thanks to a surprise airline ticket from his wife after the win. Going to the actual Super Bowl would be a dream, he said, but the unofficial “mayor” of Rockbar knows he’d miss his crew.

“I can’t drop $5,000 either,” he said. “I’d rather spend that and go back to Philly.”

During the 2018 Eagles parade, he watched the caravan go by in the cold from Broad and Oregon, then made his way back to his mother’s house in the Northeast.

“Dude, I was on the couch watching Jason Kelce’s speech with a Yuengling and a cheesesteak from Pizza City,” he said. “Doesn’t get any better than that.”