{"id":371482,"date":"2024-02-29T04:05:11","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T05:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=371482"},"modified":"2024-02-29T07:03:22","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T07:03:22","slug":"knights-mourning-death-of-founding-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=371482","title":{"rendered":"Knights mourning death of 'founding father'"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\ufeffhe Knights<\/a> and the city of Newcastle are mourning the death of a man being remembered as a "founding father" of the club, Leigh Maughan, who died on Wednesday night after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.<\/p>\n

Maughan, Michael Hill and the late Gerry Edser were crucial to the Knights forming and joining the NSW Rugby League in 1988, leading a decade-long crusade for the club to be included in an expanding competition.<\/p>\n

Maughan was a lifelong lover of the sport and respected as a player, referee and Knights board member. He was a Knights life member and in 2020 was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to rugby league.<\/p>\n

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But Maughan was perhaps best known for his commentary career, in which he \ufeffcommentated on radio station 2NX, then NBN television.<\/p>\n

"Leigh leaves an indelible mark on our city, our club and on rugby league," said Knights chief executive Philip Gardner.<\/p>\n

\"Leigh<\/p>\n

"His place in history as a founding father of the Knights is secure and we will always be thankful for everything he did in creating the club.<\/p>\n

"He was a regular face at games until relatively recently and his passion never wavered.<\/p>\n

"In Leigh's honour, we will wear black armbands next Thursday against Canberra as a show of our deep respect.<\/p>\n

"May he rest in peace."<\/p>\n

Watch the 2024 NRL premiership live and free on Nine and <\/strong><\/em>9Now<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/nbnnews\/status\/900911162014945280<\/a><\/p>\n

In an interview with the Newcastle Herald after receiving his OAM, Maughan opened up on what drove him as an administrator.<\/p>\n

"I just wanted to get Newcastle up to a standard of rugby league to have somewhere for the kids to follow on," Maughan said in 2020.<\/p>\n

"I wanted to see Newcastle get their fair shake of what was going on.<\/p>\n

"The community backed me all the way."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T\ufeffhe Knights and the city of Newcastle are mourning the death of a man being remembered as a "founding father" of the club, Leigh Maughan, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":371484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=371482"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371485,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371482\/revisions\/371485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/371484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=371482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=371482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=371482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}