{"id":910513,"date":"2026-09-30T02:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910513\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T02:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:58:12","slug":"dally-m-awards-2026-live-updates-nathan-cleary-tipped-to-claim-first-ever-dally-m-medal-from-hospital-bed-thousands-of-fans-swamp-newcastle-knights-open-training-session-at-mcdonald-jones-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910513\/","title":{"rendered":"Dally M awards 2026 LIVE updates: Nathan Cleary tipped to claim first-ever Dally M Medal from hospital bed; thousands of fans swamp Newcastle Knights\u2019 open training session at McDonald Jones Stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Grand finals produce unexpected heroes, and we already have one, in the form of 88-year-old grandmother Dawn Dunning. Dunning convinced her sister Ailsa, 86, and friend June Hill, 88, to farewell Knights fans as they bussed their way to Accor Stadium for last weekend\u2019s preliminary final victory against Penrith.<\/p>\n<p>Footage of the octogenarians waving their flags quickly went viral, culminating in the trio appearing on the Today Show on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ailsa Grant, June Hill, and Dawn Dunning.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/ccf756b2615bc5578d17cfd5274e4082c06b6dc0.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Ailsa Grant, June Hill, and Dawn Dunning.Sitthixay Ditthavong<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery overwhelming, it\u2019s hard to take, I can tell you,\u201d Dunning quipped when asked about her new-found celebrity status.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a great time waving down all the buses. We had that many cars blow their horns at us, it was just ridiculous. We couldn\u2019t get over it. It was the funniest day we\u2019ve ever had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grand finals produce unexpected heroes, and we already have one, in the form of 88-year-old grandmother Dawn Dunning.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-910513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}