Joining Super League

In May 1995 Panthers had resolved to leave the Australian Rugby League to join Super League, the new competition being established by Rupert Murdoch’s multi-national corporation News Limited. It had been one of the most difficult decisions the Club had faced.¹ Cowan had spent months analysing the situation with both Board and management before a consensus recommendation was finally put to the directors.

Not long before the decision was made, he was still hoping the problem would go away. Long-time Parramatta CEO, Denis Fitzgerald, remembers Cowan standing up at a CEO function at Souths Juniors, speaking passionately about ‘putting up the barriers to News Limited’.

Within a week he’d gone to Super League. I have to say I lost some degree of confidence in Roger after that particular situation.

There was no doubt that Cowan initially supported staying with the ARL and a short time later changed his position — he was nervous about the way things were shaping up and feared that Penrith might miss out completely.  

Coach Phil Gould had asked for a release from his contract with Panthers² to go to Easts, citing the exciting things that Easts were proposing to do in rugby league. Kerry Packer was putting pressure on clubs to stay loyal to the ARL, but was not offering anything specific, and he had a contract with the ARL to protect.

There were rumours that Packer and a few clubs, including Easts and Manly, were involved in a plan to cull some clubs in order to make a stronger and more profitable competition.³ The rumours fitted with Gould’s statements when he asked for a release but there was never any real evidence to support the rumours.

But rumours often travelled faster than fact during this period — it was increasingly difficult for clubs to distinguish genuine intelligence from speculation.

Packer appeared to have the TV rights tied up for a ridiculously low price and something was in the wind. Fewer teams in the competition would give the remaining teams a bigger slice of the TV revenue. A higher standard of competition would increase the TV value.

First-hand experience had left Cowan with the suspicion that there would no hesitation in cutting clubs that were outside the clique and considered expendable. For him it was another case of risk management. The first step in risk management is to identify the risk. In this case there was a chance that both media organisations, headed by Packer and Murdoch, were both planning how to maximise the commercialisation of Rugby League.

What was the risk to Penrith?

It seemed highly likely that both organisations would want a 12-team competition. They would also want a National Competition including Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, New Zealand, Newcastle, Brisbane, even North and South Queensland.   It followed that some Sydney clubs would be dropped.   Both groups would already know which teams they wanted in an elite competition.

Neither side had shown any interest in approaching Penrith.

Considering the connections, it was impossible to think Manly or Easts would lose out. Parramatta and St George would seem to be certainties and that might leave only one spot for another Sydney club.

As it turned out, fewer teams was exactly what the Murdoch side wanted. There was never any evidence of any plans by the other side to drop Sydney teams.⁴ The rumours were never substantiated, but the value of the TV rights was later proved to be more than twenty times what Packer had contracted to pay.

Cowan recalls it was a difficult time.

There was no way of knowing what was happening behind the scenes and the departure of Phil Gould had built a feeling of uncertainty in my mind about the future of the game. I felt that something was going on. I started to think about how we would handle worst case scenarios, and the worst-case possibility was that the two sides would get together and form an elite National Competition of 12 teams. All the other teams would then be relegated to a supporting competition. On all the evidence I could see, the risk of Penrith being one of those relegated teams was very high indeed.

When the two media giants started shaping up to each other it was obvious that Panthers was not a high priority for either of them. It was a worrying time and I started to feel that we had to consider our position carefully and urgently.

All the clubs that had so far joined Super League had been approached by News Limited. Penrith had not. Cowan went to News and put the case that the new competition needed Penrith.

David Gallop, CEO of the new National Rugby League [NRL] remembers that Panthers was the last Sydney club to join.

Roger looked pretty carefully at the ramifications of joining or not. It took him longer to decide.

Cowan became a prominent player in the world of Super League. He was on the board, and chaired its meetings during what became known as the Super League Wars.

He was also invited to be on the international Super League board. In that capacity he attended an international board meeting in Paris, along with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, France, England, South Africa, USA and Pacific Islands. Cowan says this experience gave him an excellent opportunity to get to know the people who were driving Super League, including News Limited executives. 

Super League was due to commence in 1996 with ten teams, but a Federal Court ruling delayed its launch. Instead, a traditional ARL competition was played while the legal battle continued. At the end of 1996 the Federal Court ruled in favour of Super League, allowing the rival competition to proceed in 1997 alongside the ARL. Australian rugby league was now heading into one of the most turbulent periods in its history.

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1. For readers seeking historical background to the emergence of Super League and Panthers’ decision to join the new competition, see the three realted Historical Context articles The Panthers Move ; The Real Money Fight ; and When Panthers Faced the Community
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2. This had happened in the middle of the 1994 ARL Season. I think the Souths v Penrith at the SFS on 17^th June 1994 was Gould’s last as Penrith coach. We lost that game 26-18 after being well down at half-time. Several players remarked that Gould’s half-time address was uncharacteristically one of resignation – they were puzzled by it.
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3. One of the catalysts for those rumours was a large offer being made to Canberra lock Brad Clyde, which would have torpedoed salary cap limits. Of course, these sorts of accusations fly through the rugby league world.
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4. There weren’t rumours about an elite ARL competition after Murdoch made his strike – at that time they were intent on staving off the raid from Murdoch. Before Murdoch struck, there were rumours about clubs opening their chequebooks in anticipation of a big change to the competition. ↩︎

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