Part 33 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion
This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.
As discussions quietly continued between Penrith and Parramatta, a very different story was beginning to circulate publicly.
It was not long after the two clubs began their talks that the media speculation began. Cowan says there was a great deal of misinformation, with many comments proving to be wide of the mark.
On one occasion someone announced on Ray Hadley’s rugby league radio show that the merger of Penrith and Parramatta was a ‘done deal’. There was no truth in that statement, but it stirred up a hornet’s nest in Penrith. People believed if they heard it on the Hadley program it must be true.
Denis Fitzgerald bears this out. ‘It was never a done deal,’ he says. ‘Far from it.’
As the old media adage goes, “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.” In this case, rumour was rapidly overtaking reality.
Rumours flew that Cowan had already made a secret agreement with Parramatta. The rumours were soon repeated by others, including some who understood how football clubs operated and should have appreciated that no chief executive could make such a decision alone.
Perhaps the most surprising assumption was that I could somehow make such a decision on my own. Businesses simply do not operate that way. The board of directors has total power over decisions that affect the members they represent.
Mick Kelly, who writes for the Western Weekender, still pushes the story that I was the one who had to be defeated to avoid the merger.1 While the agendas of some people would later become obvious, Kelly’s rigid stance is still difficult to understand. He has some experience in the way clubs work, so he must have known that what he was saying was untrue. At the time of merger discussions, he was well aware of the alliance of five directors. This was the group who would later claim to be the Footy Five and it included the owner of the newspaper that employed him. They held a majority of five of the nine votes, so nothing could happen that they did not support. Kelly had to know that.
The truth is, they only needed four votes to stop a merger.
There is one little known fact about this episode. Cowan had suggested a further safeguard — instead of a decision by simple majority, the votes of at least six directors should be required for a decision in favour of merging with another club. Of course, the alliance of five could have used its majority to strengthen this even further had they deemed it necessary — they could have made a unanimous vote as the safeguard.
It was a practical safeguard that made it even less plausible that a merger could occur without overwhelming Board support.
Kelly’s ‘rigid stance’ on the issue continues to this day. During the course of the research for this book, the author was told by a couple of people that he [Kelly] had some important evidence to present that would prove that Cowan wanted a merger with Parramatta. Apparently, the evidence is in the form of a taped interview in which the Panthers CEO had said he thought that a merger with Parramatta was the way to go.
Questioned on this point, Cowan says depending on the time of the interview, and the circumstances — and of course the context — it is very possible.
They were some very desperate moments during those years. I have said all along that a merger was preferable to seeing Panthers disappear from the rugby league scene altogether. I never stepped back from that belief. I could not understand the opposing belief that it would be better to “die on our swords”. When the board would not even discuss such an important issue, it made me very suspicious that something strange was going on behind the scenes.
Panthers group chairman Barry Walsh calls the merger story a ‘storm in a teacup’, because — as far as he and the rest of the Board was concerned — it was never going to happen. There was no need for the high drama and the media beat-ups. Attempts to investigate the options carefully, maintain a low profile and not raise controversy in the community were being undermined by media speculation that had no foundation in fact.
In July, the Western Weekender, a local newspaper owned by director Greg Evans, ran a story on its front page advocating a ‘stand alone’ position for the Club. On 2 August, the story broke in the Sunday Telegraph. It said that a merger between the two clubs was ‘set to become reality next year’. It said the team would be called the Parramatta Panthers, and would play in blue and gold, the Parramatta colours. The story featured quotes from Denis Fitzgerald, but none from Roger Cowan, or indeed anyone from the Panthers club. But it was enough to set things in motion in the city of Penrith
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- Mick Kelly no longer writes for the Western Weekender. like many of the protagonists in this chapter of the Panthers story he undoubdtedly maintains his view. ↩︎
Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 