The End of Season Drinks That Weren’t So Cordial

A removed section from the original Chapter 8: A Taste of Injustice.

The Penrith-Parramatta game was the last home game of the 1984 season. If the Panthers won, it would mean a semi-finals appearance for the first time in the Club’s history.

By half-time it was becoming obvious that the game was not going well. During the second half, Cowan walked across and sat with the chairman, Leo Armstrong.

Cowan commented to Armstrong that it was pretty obvious this would be the last game of the season. He suggested to Armstrong that the success of the team should be acknowledged in some way. They — the CEO and Chairman — agreed to invite the players and officials back to the boardroom after the game.

Cowan admits he had not thought the invitation through carefully enough. Because it was a spur of the moment decision, only a few directors knew about it. At the time, though, it did not seem important.

At the start of the next board meeting, managers were asked to leave the room.

Don Ellks says,

It was the first time we had ever been asked to leave. Roger sat for some moments as if deciding what to do. He did leave, but reluctantly. After a while Leo came outside and said the board had moved a vote of no confidence in him, and that John Hewett had been re-elected as chairman.

The perceived slight on the directors who missed out on the after-game drinks had provided enough leverage for JohnHewett to make a grab for the chairman position he still resented losing. Cowan was in a tight spot. Conflict on the board had been effecting decision making since 1983, to the detriment of the Club.

This change would affect the morale of the management team. The turnover of the Club was increasing rapidly, scarcely a day seemed to pass without discussion of new initiatives, and it was vital to avoid any instability.

Sensitive negotiations were taking place to refinance the Club’s loans in a deal that would save the club hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reputation and experience of Leo Armstrong as a bank manager was an advantage – there was obvious respect for him by the negotiating bank.

One faction of the board, led by Armstrong, was supportive of management. As well, Armstrong was an excellent chairman, highly respected in the community, by staff and by the members. The other faction seemed to be driven by Hewett. He was seen as the leader of that faction, but Cowan believed he was being pushed by another director, Murray Clarke. Of late, these two had lost the respect of management, staff and quite a lot of members. In this instance they were not acting in the interests of the Club. Any publicity about the chairman’s removal had the potential to do damage.

Worse for Cowan was that Armstrong was about to be humiliated because he agreed with one of Cowan’s suggestions.

When the board called me back into the meeting, I had already decided that the resolution could do a great deal of damage. The negative publicity, the reaction of the members, the negative impact on the finance negotiations and the unfair impact on Armstrong’s reputation should be avoided at all costs. Importantly, the club’s constitution did not clearly give the Board the power to remove the Chairman and it needed a legal opinion. I refused to return to the meeting unless he was reinstated, or it went back to the members.

Cowan reminded the board that it was unconstitutional to continue the meeting without the company secretary. When they called on Don Ellks to come in to act as secretary, Ellks also refused.

During the following week, Hewett went to Cowan’s office to advise that the board had appointed him chairman. Cowan told him that he believed it was improper to move a vote of no confidence and damage Armstrong’s reputation over such a trivial issue. He told Hewett that the management team would continue to recognise Armstrong as the chairman unless there was compliance with the constitution and members of the club endorsed the vote of no confidence. A stalemate had been reached.

Soon after, two of the directors from the Hewett faction would resign, and a tentative peace would return to the board with Armstrong in the chair. Under the surface though, hostility continued to bubble. Hewett would seek revenge — and eventually get it. ‘The conflict between the two factions had been damaging the Club for years‘, says Cowan. ‘Now war had been declared in no uncertain terms.‘

The next election, in 1985, was the board’s first ever departure from its traditional practice of presenting itself as one solid unit for re-election. Neither Hewett nor Hubbard were re-elected to the board.

While Hubbard remains ambivalent about the events of those years, he says that Hewett was devastated. It hit him pretty hard, says Hubbard. ‘His health suffered, and I don’t know that he ever really got over it.’

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Related Topics

• Part 22 — An Investigation Starts
• Part 23 — The First Shot at Phyro
• Major Player — Leo Armstrong

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Related Themes

Board Decisions · Governance · Conflict· Football Club

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