BLACK armbands, a minute's silence and a video tribute before Thursday night's season opener against Canberra at McDonald Jones Stadium is never going to cut it.
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Not when you consider the debt of gratitude everyone associated with the Newcastle Knights owes the late, great Leigh Maughan, who passed away last week at the age of 84.
Anybody with any understanding of the Knights' history will understand why Maughan is recognised as the club's founding father and appreciate the legacy he has left behind.
The best part of 50 years ago, Maughan started chasing a dream, spruiking the concept of fielding a Newcastle team in the best rugby league competition in the world, the NSWRL premiership.
He joined forces with real-estate agent Gerry Edser and prominent solicitor Michael Hill, and after initially encountering resistance from indignant Newcastle RL clubs, slowly but surely they started to make inroads.
The announcement in April, 1987, that three teams - Brisbane, Gold Coast and Newcastle - would be added to the NSWRL competition was the culmination of a decade of Maughan's hard work.
As Hill told the Newcastle Herald last week: "Rest assured, without his efforts, his drive and persistence, the Knights would never have existed at all ... Leigh was the main man."
But Maughan's job was not finished. As the Knights' inaugural marketing manager, he was responsible for selling a team of unknowns to the community.
That Newcastle were able to attract a 26,340-strong turnout to their first premiership match, against Parramatta, and then finished the 1988 season with the best average crowd (20,617) in the league, speaks for itself.
Twenty years later, long after he had retired, Maughan returned to serve on Newcastle's board of directors, at a time when the club was in dire straits financially and battling to stay afloat.
In the Knights' history, nobody has made a greater contribution.
And that brings me to a point I first raised four years ago, when I wrote: "Maughan, like the rest of us, is not as young as he used to be ... he may never have pulled on a boot for the Newcastle Knights, but it's hard to think of anyone more worthy of Hall of Fame status."
There are currently 11 inductees in Newcastle's Hall of Fame - 10 of whom were players, plus inaugural coach Allan McMahon.
I see no reason why "Lethal Leigh", whose funeral will be on Monday at Pettigrew's, Mayfield, from 12pm, should not join them, albeit posthumously.
It is surely the least that can be done to commemorate an iconic Novocastrian.
