What Makes a Good Club Director

The club industry in NSW occupies a unique position — strongly regulated by the state government, but still very much a part of its individual communities. Most clubs are heavily involved in sport and recreational groups in their areas, and provide donations, facilities, and other benefits. Many also support local charities and organisations. By 2003, the total cash donations from NSW clubs amounted to around $102 million. The main recipients were health and social services programs, education (cash, scholarships, library support), emergency services and disaster relief, and of course local sport, at both professional and non-professional levels.

The situation of club directors is also unique. The shareholders who elect boards of major corporations have a ‘hip pocket’ interest in who is overseeing the running of the company. The directors are usually there because they bring some skill or expertise that qualifies them to do a good job.

In most club elections, a 1% turnout of members would be classed as good. This changes only slightly where there is a major issue being played out, as at Panthers in 2002. Even then, the 3000 people who voted still only represented a small percentage of the club’s 130,000 members at the time.¹

People pay to become shareholders in a company, whereas people become members of a club to enjoy the facilities it offers and the geographical convenience. Few of them have any interest in the politics unless they become aware of major problems that are likely to impact on the amenities they enjoy.²

Craig Fantom³ is now the CEO of a well-known Irish pub on the western outskirts of Sydney. Before moving into hotels a couple of years ago, he had spent 25 years in the club industry, 20 of them dealing with boards. It was the three years he spent as CEO of the Rooty Hill RSL Club that became the catalyst for a change in his career direction.

 ‘Club directors have the same fiduciary duties as any other director, and often have control of a multi million dollar organisation’, says Fantom, who believes that one of the industry’s major weaknesses is the quality of the directors it attracts. 

Roger Cowan says he was aware of the difficulties at Rooty Hill, but his experience at Panthers has been quite different and he doesn’t share Fantom’s view on club directors. Cowan says that some of the directors that have caused the most problems for Panthers over the years appeared to be the best qualified.

Look at the group that set themselves up as the Footy Five.⁴ There was a solicitor, an accountant, two successful businessmen and a private investigator. They should have been the best directors we ever had but the reader of this tale might have some doubts about that.

There are a lot of directors in the club industry who are volunteering their time because of a genuine interest in their club. If they lack formal qualifications they make up for it with common sense, loyalty to the cause and the willingness to listen to expert opinions when they are needed. 

One [Panthers] director who stands out in my memory was Lou Brown, a truck driver and a rough diamond if you ever saw one. Another was Poker Ausburn. He was a boilermaker and was chairman of the club for several of our most successful years. I could name a lot more very good directors and they all had one thing in common – a genuine unselfish desire to see the Club succeed. An uneducated director with a genuine sense of ownership and sound common sense will be an infinitely better director than a Rhodes scholar whose heart isn’t in it.

To the allegation that he worked with boards of ‘yes-men’, Cowan says,

It really is quite ridiculous to think that directors would volunteer their time to represent the members who elected them and then turn up to meetings to be told what to do. Human nature does not work like that.

Keith Rhind remembers one amusing example of the myth.

Before Vern Mychael was elected to the board, he would be at every general meeting asking the most probing questions. He made it well known that if he ever got onto the Board, he “was going to put Cowan in his place”.  He was elected and became one of Cowan’s strongest supporters and friends.

Rhind recalls that years later Mychael related how different was the reality of the board from the myth.

Nobody in their wildest dreams could imagine Vern as a yes-man. He was a very strong character.

Rhind also points out that nobody could say Barry Walsh was a yes-man, and yet on most issues, he supported Cowan to the hilt.

The fact is that they shared the same vision for Panthers and they agreed on most things. They were both passionate about succeeding. Barry’s greatest passion is rugby league, but he knows the future of rugby league depends on the success of the club in every other way. When they did disagree, they were able to discuss it rationally and with respect for each other. The “yes-men” theory is really quite ludicrous when you think about it.

Another claim was that Cowan could choose who he wanted on the board. Boards are elected – as October 2002 proved. All the campaigning and the tickets made no difference. The members decide who they want.

It was the vagaries of directors that had seen Cowan in court facing charges in 1986.⁵ It had also taken him ten years to convince a board to implement a change to the way the rugby league club was administered.⁶

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1. A total of 3273 ballot papers were retruned in the March 2002 election. 110 of these were informal. See: Temby Report page 39. ↩︎
2. Rugby League Clubs may be slightly different. If the team is performing badly, members appear to take great interest. The 1971 Extraordinary General meeting that saw Merv Cartwright and Ron Partridge resign had an attendance of 1000, when there was only 6000 members. See: Part 8 — Divided Control: The Club and Football ↩︎
3. Craig Fantom held this role at the time of publication. ↩︎
4. The origins and later use of the term “Footy Five” are examined in Beyond the Book — The Footy Five — A Name that Rewrote the Story. ↩︎
5. This story begins at Part 22 — An Investigation Starts . Also relevant is Beyond the Book — The End of Season Drinks That Weren’t So Cordial ↩︎
6. See Part 21 — The Right Structure. Finally! ↩︎

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