Former Portsmouth goalkeeper Alan Knight has died aged 65 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2024.<\/p>\n
Knight spent 22 years playing at Fratton Park, making 801 appearances between 1978 and 2000 \u2013 the record for a keeper at a single English club.<\/p>\n
Pompey fans gave him the nickname ‘The Legend’ and after retiring he became both a coach and ambassador for the club.<\/p>\n
Knight kept a clean sheet on his debut, aged 16, against Rotherham in the old Division Three in 1978 and he went on to represent the club in all four divisions. <\/p>\n
There were three promotion-winning campaigns, including a Division Three title success and Pompey’s return to top-flight football for the first time in 28 years in the 1986-87 season.<\/p>\n
Knight’s final appearance for the club came aged 38 on 3 January 2000 in a 2-1 Division One defeat at Norwich, making him the only Blues player to have played across four decades.<\/p>\n
Knight was awarded an MBE following his retirement, and was also handed the Freedom of the City of Portsmouth.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the BBC following his cancer diagnosis, Knight said it “came as a massive shock” but he wanted to discuss it publicly to encourage others to seek advice if they spot symptoms.<\/p>\n
He joined a group of men playing walking football in Portsmouth and said it helped them all come to terms with their diagnoses. <\/p>\n
“Once you get diagnosed, once the cancer word is used, it just changes everything,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The support network, having your mates around you – family first and foremost – but then to have your mates and your team-mates around you is huge.<\/p>\n
“It gives you that lift when you can be slipping into that bit of depression.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Portsmouth goalkeeper Alan Knight has died aged 65 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2024. Knight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-611210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}