A removed section from the original Chapter 11: A Strange Response to a Lifeline. The following section presents one theory Roger Cowan developed as he tried to understand decisions that had never fully made sense to him. It is an invitation into his thinking on the puzzle and should be read as his interpretation rather than an established historical conclusion.
Relatively speaking, John Bateman was a figure in the public eye in Penrith. In 1993, Sydney won the right to stage the Olympic Games in 2000. Just over a year later, John Bateman was elected to Penrith council. Soon after that he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Penrith Rugby League Club board. At first glance these events appear unrelated. To Roger Cowan, however, they gradually formed part of a much larger picture.
Bateman, a member of the Labor Party, ran as an independent against Pat Sheehy – an endorsed Labor candidate. As a result, Bateman was expelled from the Party. Pat Sheehy is a long-time Penrith councillor. He believes there is little doubt that Bateman’s great ambition at the time was to be mayor at the time of the Olympics.
By all accounts, Bateman did an excellent job in that position.
Penrith councillor Jackie Greenow said the Olympics were a wonderful opportunity for Penrith, and Bateman was a good choice at the time.
John is a sporting nut, and he did an outstanding job representing council, Penrith and the entire community. He was meeting with dignitaries such as Princess Anne and Juan Antonio Samaranch, and he put in an enormous amount of work.
Roger Cowan agrees. ‘John Bateman was one of the best mayors we ever had’, he says.
While Pat Sheehy questions Cowan’s judgement on this point, he says ‘Other people could have done it, but probably not with the pizzazz that John Bateman did.’
For many years, mayors of Penrith had been restricted to a one-year term, following a ten-year stint by one mayor in the 70s. After Bateman had served his one year in 1999, he would normally have stepped aside for someone else.
Pat Sheehy explains.
John Bateman became mayor when he did simply because he had the numbers, and it was the year before the Olympics. There was a full council election in September 1999, and the Labor party effectively gained control. But the party decided that it was in the city’s best interest for John to continue as mayor in 2000, if that’s what he wanted to do, because of all the lead-up work he’d been involved in, and all the things that would carry over from September 1999 to the Olympics in September 2000. The other thing was that at that time, there was no-one else on council that could have done the job as well as he did it.
In my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that this is what John wanted more than anything in the world.
The events surrounding the emerging conflict in the Panthers boardroom naturally caused Cowan to search for reasons.
Over time I came to suspect that the real problem with signing it was that the media would start speculating again about ‘done deals’, for the purpose of grabbing headlines. It struck me that publicity indicating Panthers was about to merge with Parramatta, no matter how untrue, was not in the interests of either Bateman or Evans. With council elections looming and a decision to be made about who would be mayor in the Olympics year, it was probably the last thing they would want.
Statements that they believed signing the letter would have resulted in a merger leave a big question mark. How could it have ever led to a merger if the Five were against it? They had the majority vote.
I tried at the time to come up with an alternative to my growing belief that this whole rugby league issue, right from the time it was reported that Panthers was at serious risk, had been about political ambitions.
Their refusal to discuss strategies for reducing the risk generated powerful negative feelings in me. The feeling that it was all about politics and not about Panthers became a deep-seated festering sore in my psyche, even though I had no way of knowing if I was correct. It was this suppressed anger and frustration that caused me to explode in meetings from time to time.
Even in retrospect, I struggle to clean such a cynical view from my mind. I realise that if my interpretation had been correct, it would mean the catalyst for the enormous cost over the last few years to Panthers and to me had nothing to do with rugby league.
I can see one major flaw in my cynicism. To be a complete theory it would need an explanation of Mulock’s involvement. Having agonised over this one question for six or seven years, I could not find any explanation that made sense.
There is no solid evidence. The more objective view of a reader who was not closely involved may help find more generous conclusions.
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Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 