An Information Night — Weaponised

Two weeks later, Penrith Council joined the fight. A resolution was passed at a council meeting to send a letter to Panthers urging them to stand alone. Several councillors spoke in support of the motion, emphasising both the importance of the football team to Penrith’s identity and the economic value it brought to the city. One councillor suggested that the council ‘should let the NRL know where we are and urge Panthers to stand firm’.¹

Council’s stance created a whole new dynamic. Two Panthers directors had council links. One, John Bateman, was already on council and it was common knowledge that he had his eye on the mayoral seat for the following year. His ally, Greg Evans had been a councillor in the early 90s, and was campaigning to be re-elected in the next council election.

Throughout most of the Penrith community, the issue sparked passion and emotion, and massive amounts of rhetoric, but there seemed to be little understanding or acceptance of the reality of the situation.

Ron Mulock, a former deputy premier of NSW and Penrith mayor, had been the club patron since its early days. He passionately opposed even the thought of a merger with any other team. He is quoted many times as saying he ‘would rather die on his sword’, than merge.

Through the club’s early days, Cowan had enjoyed a friendly relationship with Mulock. They were joint architects of the project to establish Penrith’s Police Citizens Boys’ Club as a joint venture between the council and the club. It was the first boys’ club of its kind in Australia to be built without the need for public fund-raising.

Board chairman Barry Walsh had also been a longtime friend of Mulock. When the Parramatta merger became an issue, this all changed. Walsh speaks of a day when Mulock arrived at his house, very upset and behaving in a rude and aggressive manner. It was a side to his character that Walsh had not seen. It was also a shock to Walsh’s wife who had always been a staunch Mulock supporter.

Walsh tried to explain the situation to Mulock. He understood the patron’s concerns, and wanted to reassure him. He suggested that if he would attend a board meeting, he would see for himself that the directors had no intention whatsoever of approving a merger. Mulock refused the invitation.

The Board decided to hold a public meeting to inform the members – and the team’s fans and supporters exactly what was going on. Its purpose was not to seek a decision, but to explain the situation facing the club and answer questions from members and supporters.

Cowan was to address the meeting held on 7 September 1998, but was quite unprepared for what happened.

I was aware of the controversy out in the community. We had just come through the whole Super League saga and people were very emotional about any possibility of merging with another club. But there was so much misinformation flying around. The board had agreed that our members and supporters should be given a factual analysis of the situation.

I decided to test my address on about eight of our managers. I was going to speak from notes to make sure that the message would not change on the night, no matter what. I asked them to look for any possible bias in what I was saying.  I wanted to present both sides of the problem. They needed to understand that it was essential to fully investigate the situation.

If we decided to remain as a stand alone club there was, at that time, a very strong chance we would have no team in the NRL competition. If we decided to merge with another club, there would be a different set of negative results. They needed to have the full story.

I made a few changes on the advice of the management team, but we were confident that the message was objective and honest.

Rather than reducing uncertainty, the meeting fundamentally changed the course of the debate.

Cowan has described the meeting as an ambush. He says he and the board executive were completely caught by surprise.  After Cowan addressed the meeting, Ron Mulock took the podium. Cowan says it was a moment he will never forget.

He was shouting and ranting about lies and corruption and saying all sorts of crazy stuff, and it seemed to be mostly aimed at me. He attacked four members of the board, carrying on that they had 80 years experience between them. He was even adding up their ages. The tirade went on and on. He made the “rather die on my sword” comment, and told the meeting that the league would never drop Penrith from the competition. Souths used the same questionable rationale and were dropped from the competition a few months later.

This was a public forum, and Cowan says he could not believe Mulock’s extraordinary behavior.

Later, I wondered about the reasons for the personal attacks. He was speaking as if he had come prepared for a debate, and it sounded as if he believed that I would be advocating a merger, and that I would be supported by some directors. If this really was the case, he had been badly misled.

This was the most troubling aspect of the whole thing. The Board had voted unanimously against any merger, but he was acting as if he had been told something very different.

His behaviour on that night was just another piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

There was another strange aspect to this forum.

John Bateman, responding to written questions sent in late 2006, said that the decision by members at the 7 September meeting was the reason he had continued his ‘stand alone’ stance.²

But this was not a proper members’ meeting.

A meeting of members for the purpose of making decisions would have required notices being mailed to all members three weeks in advance. This was nothing more than an information forum. Non-members were allowed to attend. Less than 350 people attended. There was no vote taken.

At the meeting the Five took the opportunity to declare their determination to stand alone despite a few weeks earlier having agreed to look at all options.

The following night’s board meeting virtually ensured there would be no further discussion on the subject. The continuing rationale for such a closed stance was that the members had spoken and that was what the members wanted. The fact is that many thousands of members would not even have been aware the meeting was held. The Board had taken no measure of members’ views.
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1. The position adopted by the Council was very interesting. Since at least 1994, research had been regularly done and the exposure and value the Penrith Rugby League team brought to the local community was an integral part of that research. Yet until this point the Council had failed to acknowledge that value in any way. In fact, it often seemed that certain councillors and council officers resented the thought that it was Panthers bringing Penrith growing visibility.
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2. This was in correspondence from John Bateman to Jennie Bentley dated 7th Januray 2007. The statement shows he retained the belief:
   … it was my view that the members “had spoken” on 7 September 1998 and I was happy to uphold their direction to
   the board to “stand alone”. ↩︎

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