Part 58 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 16: The Fear of Reverse Takeover
This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.
The question of whether the amalgamation strategy increased the risk that Panthers could be taken over by a group hostile to the interests of the Penrith members was first raised when the Board was discussing the Mekong Club.
Someone floated the idea that Panthers could be taken over by the Vietnamese community. Greg Evans scoffed at the fears. Any organised group could take over Panthers just as easily from inside Panthers as from another club, he said.
That was true.
Out of the 50,000 Penrith members, it was unusual for more than 900 people to vote in a board election. Any well organised group with quite a small number of members could take control of the Board.
The constitutional change went through in January 2002 and ensured Penrith the protection that the Five had been arguing for. By then, although the group continued to support one another, the Five had become four following Greg Evans’s resignation in September 2001.
In the early months of 2002, with some of the Five (now Four) still alleging that he was trying to ‘sell off’ Panthers, Cowan argued that having the organisation spread over 14 sites gave added protection, not less. An attempted takeover has to become obvious. It would need a lot of promotion to succeed. But some of the Four continued to portray Newcastle as a significant threat
As the membership issue blew up into conflict between management and Board, Cowan tried to explain to the Five the difficulties facing anyone mounting a takeover strategy.
If, for instance, Newcastle wanted to get control, it would have to win two places in its own right, and then organise others to be elected on the Penrith ticket. But if there was the slightest suspicion that this was happening, the members of the 12 other clubs would hear about it and be motivated into action.
And of course, the largest membership of them all, Penrith, would have been opposed. And why would the members of any club in the group support a back door takeover by another club? Newcastle would have to set up candidates in other clubs – and in Penrith – and then persuade enough members to vote for them. The more clubs in the group, the greater the logistical hurdle would become.
Cowan is convinced that there was never the slightest possibility of a reverse takeover.
In an interview in 2006, Greg Evans said he had been told that the union was definitely planning a takeover of Panthers.
Reverse takeover was not a furphy. The union movement was very strong, and I know someone in the union movement who said that that’s what they were planning to do.
Evans did not produce evidence to the Inquiry of the broader union takeover plan he later described. The Inquiry was presented with evidence of organised electioneering by people associated with ClubNova. A “Friends of ClubNova” communication urged members to elect two Newcastle representatives and support “like minded candidates from other clubs” as part of a nine-person ticket.
Temby found that most of the existing directors believed the election would change the composition of the Board and were worried by that prospect. He also found that legal doubt had arisen over whether the ClubNova and Port Macquarie members were entitled to vote. That legal uncertainty became the principal basis on which the Board cancelled the election.
Group board director Gary Kennedy, from Panthers ClubNova in Newcastle, is also the secretary of the Trades Hall in that city.1 He laughs at the suggestion that they wanted to take over Panthers.
We had enough problems trying to keep our own club operating. Why would we even think about taking on something as big as Panthers? It’s just ridiculous!
David Meidling was also a member of Panthers’ Group Board and is on the Port Macquarie Panthers Advisory Board.2
I can confidently tell you that the whole thing was a furphy, probably developed by some people as a type of scare tactic. It had absolutely no basis of fact in Port Macquarie during the lead-up to the amalgamation, or any time after.
There is an important distinction in the evidence presented to the Inquiry. There was organised electioneering involving ClubNova members and a nine-person ticket. But that is not the same thing as evidence of a planned union takeover of Panthers. Temby recorded the directors’ fears of a reverse takeover, but did not find that such a takeover was actually being planned.
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- Gary has since retired from Trades Hall, and the ClubNova clubs were purchased by Wests Newcastle, so he is no longer involved with Panthers. A great pity, as he is whip-smart and a firebrand who will always be upfront with his thoughts. ↩︎
- While Port Macquarie Panthers remains in the Panthers Group, there is no longer a Group Board – or, if it called a Group Board it is effectively the Penrith Board. ↩︎
Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 
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