Emerging shortly before 8o’clock last night from a board meeting that lasted almost four hours, Tew said the decision was not unanimous but the majority of directors believed the Tinkler Sports Group’s offer, which includes $10million in guaranteed annual sponsorship revenue for the next 10 years and a bank guarantee of $20million for the first two years of that deal, was ‘‘superior to the alternatives’’.

Tew said an extraordinary general meeting of up to 3000 eligible voting members would be held at the earliest opportunity, most likely Thursday, March 31, at which a 75per cent majority is required to vote in favour of Tinkler’s bid to make the relevant changes to the club’s constitutional structure.

‘‘After due consideration of the attendant risks, the board believes the commercial benefits of the transaction are superior to the alternatives, and on that basis recommend this transaction to members for their support,’’ Tew said, reading from a hand-written prepared statement.

When that news was relayed to Tinkler last night, the multimillionaire racing and mining magnate told the Newcastle Herald: ‘‘That’s great news.’’

When asked whether he and the directors would now stand alongside Tinkler and urge Knights members to vote in favour of the proposal, Tew said: ‘‘That’s exactly what that statement says. It’s a defining day ... It is a watershed day, and it is a big decision for our members to make.’’

Tew, who said he personally endorsed Tinkler’s proposal, and Tinkler Sports Group executive chairman Ken Edwards said a unanimous board endorsement was not required for the offer to remain, and that the support of a majority of directors was sufficient.

‘‘This is a big decision, and as I’ve read there, there is attendant risks in that, which our members will assess in their own right,’’ Tew said.

‘‘They’re fully explained, and they will be fully explained and posted out to them in an explanatory memorandum, so our members will have an opportunity to bring their own considerations to the table.’’

Tew said the necessary paperwork had to be sent to the club’s printers by 9am today to make the deadline for a March 31 meeting.

Earlier, Knights chief executive Steve Burraston emerged from the board meeting after about two hours to attend the club’s corporate season launch at Fort Scratchley last night.

‘‘It’s about clarification and going through it, and they are still working through the document ... They’re actually working through it page by page, line by line, and getting a good understanding from the lawyers what each clause means,’’ Burraston said.

‘‘That’s why we haven’t rushed it. We’ve always said we’ll never rush this decision.

‘‘It’s the most important decision that the club will ever make and we’ve got to give the board every opportunity, and the members every opportunity, to have all the information necessary and to make an informed decision on that information, so that’s the process that they’re going through at the moment.

After twice being postponed on Wednesday, the board meeting to analyse Tinkler’s proposal was scheduled for 8.30 yesterday morning but Burraston said it was pushed back until the afternoon because directors did not receive copies of the final document until yesterday morning.

The meeting finally began at 4.15pm, Burraston left at 6.30pm, and directors Leigh Maughan and Peter Corcoran followed him out the door five minutes later.

Burraston said it was never the club’s intention to announce their decision to members or corporate supporters at the club’s season launches yesterday and last night.

‘‘We always said we would call a members’ meeting when we had a completed document. We do have a completed document now, and we will be putting a members’ memorandum together to go out in the next couple of days, as soon as possible,’’ he said.

‘‘The important thing now is that members get the opportunity to go through that document, take what advice they need, and as we’ve always said, the decision is theirs. It’s not mine, it’s not the board’s, it’s nobody else’s. The members will make the decision.’’

Thornton was responsible for a series of full-page advertisements in the Newcastle Herald last week advising Knights members to consider the so-called Patron’s Trust and status quo as an alternative to a Nathan Tinkler takeover at a historic privatisation ballot on March 31.

Thornton is the secretary of the Newcastle Knights Supporters Club, an organisation he estimates once contained 600 members but is now down to about 10.

He and supporters club colleagues Marilyn Edwards, David Turrell and Bill Gray were invited to meet yesterday with TSG executive chairman Ken Edwards and chief executive Troy Palmer.

Knights skipper Kurt Gidley and former players Steve Simpson and Bill Peden also attended.

Thornton said Edwards and Palmer had ‘‘presented themselves very, very well’’ and allayed at least some of his concerns.

‘‘I wouldn’t say I’m in favour but they’ve convinced me on quite a few things that troubled me, put it that way,’’ Thornton said.

Thornton said he felt it was important that somebody provided some ‘‘opposition’’ to Tinkler’s privatisation bid.

‘‘You can’t let people just walk in and take over,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s pros and cons for both sides . . . but on paper it looks very attractive.

‘‘Once they put it on paper you can only hope, if they’re successful of course, they go through with everything they say.’’

Asked whether he would vote for or against Tinkler, Thornton was non-committal.

‘‘Like us all, I’ve got until the 31st to think which way I’m going to go,’’ he said. ‘‘We don’t know what’s going to come out in the next eight or nine days.’’

He did not expect the supporters club would run any more advertisements, which he said last week had been partially funded by the Patron’s Trust – a claim denied by Patron’s Trust figurehead Andrew Poole.

‘‘As far as we’re concerned, they’re done,’’ Thornton said.

The TSG has already met with the Once a Knights Old Boys group and Knights Nannas and plans to address the Carlson Club and Excalibur Club this week, before a members information night on March 28.

‘‘It went well,’’ Edwards said of yesterday’s meeting. ‘‘We had a chance to listen to each of the issues they wanted to discuss and give them a good, honest view of what our proposal is really about, rather than what they had been it was about.

‘‘We think they received that information in a really positive manner.’’

Edwards said if Tinkler was to gain control of the Knights, the club would retain an advisory board of at least five people, all of whom, potentially, could be members.

He urged all members to make their vote count on March 31.

‘‘It’s very important that members don’t just assume it’s a fait accompli because it’s such a good deal,’’ he said.

‘‘Our message to members is to make sure you vote, either by being at the meeting on March 31 or by proxy.

‘‘Be part of the vote and be a part of history.’’

Tinkler will need a 75 majority at the ballot to assume ownership of the club.

As the most momentous ballot in the history of the Newcastle Knights draws near, the overwhelming vibe has been supportive of a Nathan Tinkler takeover.

The Knights board have endorsed his privatisation proposal.

The Once A Knight Old Boys have given it their blessing.

Former players like Andrew and Matthew Johns, Paul Harragon, Mark Sargent, Steve Simpson and Tony Butterfield are all for it.

So too are Newcastle’s only premiership-winning coaches, Mal Reilly and Michael Hagan.

Prominent businessmen and former board members Mark Fitzgibbon and Garry Murphy reckon it is a no-brainer.

The founding fathers of the Knights, Leigh Maughan and Michael Hill, just wish Tinkler had been around when the club was launched 23 years ago.

And Minister for the Hunter Jodi McKay – no great fan of the Knights’ current administration – has been a vocal Tinkler advocate.

Yet despite widespread acknowledgement that a self-made billionaire can provide the financial security the Knights have craved since their inception, there are obviously still some members who doubt whether private ownership is the right direction.

Hence the full-page advertisements that appeared in this paper several times last week, and again today.

Whether the campaign, organised by a vocal minority, is gaining any momentum may not be known until the historic extraordinary general meeting on March 31.

But suffice to say that, behind the scenes, the Tinkler group are growing apprehensive. Tinkler needs a minimum of 75 per cent of members to vote in his favour.

So if slightly more than one in four vote to retain the status quo, his bid will be rejected.

It is worth remembering that in 2006, when South Sydney members voted to hand Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court control, the new owners scraped in with a 75.8 per cent majority.

A mere 32 votes decided the outcome – 2988 voting in favour of the bid and 954 against.

The Knights have an estimated 3000 voting members. The anti-Tinkler faction needs at most 750 votes – possibly fewer, depending on how many abstain.

Exactly what the naysayers are concerned about is a moot point.

Their ‘‘defend our kingdom’’ advertisements have touted the so-called ‘‘Patrons’ Trust’’ as a viable alternative to Tinkler’s deal.

The Patrons’ Trust appears more a figment of someone’s imagination than a financial lifeline.

Knights officials seem unsure whether it is a loan or a donation, and at this stage only one man, Andrew Poole, has publicly confirmed his involvement.

Apparently there are other benefactors out there willing to kick in a few million dollars, but we can only guess at their identities.

And while Tinkler has been asked to make iron-clad, legal assurances about his bona fides, it does not appear the Patrons’ Trust – whoever they may be – has been subjected to the same scrutiny.

Certainly the cash injection the Patrons’ Trust are offering – a rubbery $6thmillion to $10thmillion – is a drop in the ocean compared with what Tinkler is prepared to invest.

And, strangely, there has been no mention of the Patrons’ Trust in previous lean times, when the club needed to borrow money from Tinkler, or the Newcastle Jockey Club or the Gold Coast Chargers to pay their bills.

If the Patrons’ Trust is such an attractive alternative, why did it appear on the horizon only at the 11th hour?

Patrons’ Trust aside, the intransigents are also concerned that members will lose their ‘‘entitlements’’ if the club is privatised.

But what rights do members have anyway, apart from the right to elect a board every second year, who then proceed to operate as a secret society, releasing information when it suits?

Did the board, for instance, consult members before they hired Brian Smith, endorsed his 2007 cleanout, then ultimately sacked him?

Did the board consult members before the 2007 rebellion that forced then chairman Mike Tyler to resign?

Did the board consult members before they went cap in hand to Tinkler in 2008, asking him for a $500,000 loan to help them through a cashflow crisis?

Did the board consult members in late 2008 when they stopped paying their stadium rent because they were in dispute with the State Government?

Did the board consult members before rezoning their season-ticket options for the 2011 season?

Does the board even publish minutes of their monthly meetings?

The answer to all those questions, of course, is ‘‘no’’.

Other than voting every two years for a board who then adhere to a code of confidentiality, the only entitlement members have is to turn up at an annual general meeting, usually to whinge about such big-ticket items as the volume of the Ausgrid Stadium loudspeakers and the price of pies and beer on game day.

Traditionally only a few hundred members bother attending the AGM.

Under Tinkler, there will still be a members club.

Members will elect a board and will vote two directors on to an advisory board that Tinkler’s representatives insist will have significant input into the club’s future direction.

But the doubters ask: ‘‘What happens if Tinkler walks away after 10 years?’’

The answer to that question is surely that the Knights will be debt-free and in a far stronger financial position than they are now.

Tinkler is not in this to make money.

He won’t even break even, given that he intends to wipe the club’s $3million in accumulated losses and then direct all profits back into the club. There are no strings attached – Knights chairman Rob Tew made sure of that, and should be commended for his vigilance.

Knights members should not be viewing the March 31 ballot as a choice between a billionaire bogeyman and a priceless asset handed down from generation to generation by the Novocastrian faithful.

They should consider it an IQ test.

The new home would feature one of the city's most impressive views of Merewether Beach, six bedrooms, a swimming pool in a central courtyard, a basement garage and cellar.

Newcastle City Council documents placed on public exhibition this week list the cost of constructing the planned Ocean Street home at $4.5 million.

The plans, developed by a Byron Bay-based architect and lodged by Merewether Investments Pty Ltd, include the consolidation of two separate blocks in Ocean Street, Merewether.

Company records show Mr Tinkler's wife, Rebecca, owns the sole share in Merewether Investments. Mr Tinkler and Tinkler Sports Group chief executive Troy Palmer are the company's directors.

Merewether Investments bought both properties in 2008.

The company paid $3.3 million for one property.

The house on it was formerly owned by the Steggles family and has since been knocked down.

The house on the neighbouring block, which is listed as the current place of residence for both Mr and Mrs Tinkler, cost $5.5 million.

The plans lodged with council involve the "partial demolition" of their home, as well as the removal of an existing rear garage, courtyards paths and steps.

The new building would be a "detached pavilion-style two-storey dwelling, with car parking and storage below . . . surrounding a central landscaped area".

Terraces to the south end of the site would allow the Tinklers to "enjoy the expansive ocean views along Merewether Beach and beyond".

A swimming pool would be located in the landscaped central courtyard.

"The dwelling shall be stepped back in levels from the Ocean Street frontage to ensure scale is minimised," documents given to the council say.

Mr Tinkler was unavailable for comment yesterday.