A Simple Change, Made So Difficult

2000 and 2001 should have been years of high optimism for Panthers. The Club had emerged from the tumultuous 1998-99 years without its rugby league team being eliminated from the competition or being forced to merge with Parramatta.

The new NRL competition was underway, and the club was about to complete its first two amalgamations.

But the situation in the boardroom was still tense.

In 1996, Cowan had negotiated a new contract with the Board Executive, which would take him to his planned retirement date of 2006. The same confidentiality over his remuneration arrangements that he had insisted on since 1965 was written into the contract. In 2000, that confidentiality would become another catalyst for conflict.

It would ultimately become one of the major criticisms levelled at Cowan, and a significant issue at the Temby Inquiry. But it was only one element in a Board-management relationship that was becoming increasingly dysfunctional.

During the amalgamation program, there were many important decisions to be made, and a lot of business to be dealt with at Board meetings.

On many occasions decisions were held over to the next meeting, and then another, and another, over what were just petty points. When it takes 12 months to make a relatively straightforward decision that is of ‘real time’ importance to the business, there was evidence of dysfunction. It took that long for the Board to agree on a policy governing amalgamations with other clubs. 

I can’t remember any important decision that we needed to make in that period that we didn’t make eventually. But time – and more importantly – opportunities, can be lost.

A push by management to decrease membership fees was an example.

In 2001, Panthers membership was set at $22 a year, but many of the club’s competitors were advertising their fees at around $5.50. There was great concern in the management team that membership numbers at the Penrith site were decreasing.¹

There was also confusion over trying to implement a system that would allow the members of amalgamating clubs to continue to pay the lower fees they were paying before amalgamating, but without breaching the 50% regulation.²

Having one lower membership fee right across the group was felt to be a good solution. It could also be used to push a more aggressive membership drive. It took well over a year – and some drastic measures – for the Board to agree to a reduction in fees.

Beyond the Book: The membership issue was considerably more complicated than the fee reduction alone suggests. Amalgamation had created questions about membership categories, voting rights and representation within the expanding Panthers Group. Read: Why Cutting the Membership Fee Wasn’t So Simple.

We eventually did get the fee down to $8.80, but it was a very complicated process.

In the meantime, our market was diminishing, and everyone knows that lost market share is not easy to recover. Once it was done, I think we increased the membership at Penrith by about 15,000.  There were obvious benefits to our business, and the reasons they came up with for the delays were just not logical.

At one stage one of the Five came out and said that management wanted to lower the fees to get more members so we could get rid of those directors.

The membership fee deadlock was broken using tactics that would never have been considered in the open environment of the old Panthers. It demonstrated how confrontational life in the boardroom had become by July 2002. In the week leading up to a home game, Cowan asked Rob Weaver, the club’s media manager, to prepare a press release. A Board meeting was scheduled for the morning before the game³.

The release was very strongly worded, and it spelt out the situation in detail. In part, it read:

“Five out of the nine directors have shown that they care more about their seats on the Board than they do about our members and the focus of our organisation. It brings a new meaning to the phrase ‘bums on seats’, Mr Cowan said. “I will not stand by and watch them destroy what previous boards and managers have built, which is why I am going public to let members know what is going on.”

Cowan took the document to the meeting, held it up and told the Board part of what it said. He told them that Rob Weaver was already at the football ground. He had 30 copies of the release in his briefcase, and it would be handed out to every journalist at the game unless they agreed to the new fee. They demanded that Cowan show them the release, but he refused.

Rob Weaver recalls that day:

I was sitting in the media box in the western grandstand with a briefcase full of press releases, watching the board box on the other side of the ground through binoculars. As soon as I saw Roger arrive, I was to call him for instructions.

But he called and said they had agreed to reduce the fees.

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1. There was also concern about members in regional areas being resistant to any increases. This was expressed strongly at regular meetings of venue General Managers.
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2. Section 30(9)(a) of the Registered Clubs Act required a “majority” of the clubs full members must be eligible to vote for the Board. Social Members were legally classed as a subclass of Ordinary Members and therefor were included as “full members”. In 2006 the ratio was reduced to 25% provided this was approved by a majority of full members.
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3. The game was Penrith v Melbourne which Penrith won 36-16. ↩︎

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