Focus groups — later formalised as Strategic Planning Groups — became a part of everyday life at Panthers. Glenn Matthews says the involvement of staff remains essential when Panthers considers major changes or redevelopment
Back in the early 70s, with a full-time staff numbering only 30, it already worked the same way. Kevin McGrath who started at Penrith Leagues a little after Roger Cowan, describes how it was then.
We used to have what they called think-ins or think-tanks. They started out once or twice a year, but pretty soon they were every three months. They would get groups of employees – someone from the bars, poker machines, a cleaner, an office person, one of the catering staff, and one of the directors – and put us all in a room together for a day. We had to sit there and come up with ideas that we thought could benefit the club. The ideas could be as weird and wonderful as we liked. Roger used to tell us the more way out, the better.
We had to work as a group, write the ideas down, throw them around, and come up with a list of a final few. Then they would pass the lists on to another similar group, to be discussed and modified again.
That’s an interesting comment, but is it true?
McGrath once jokingly told Cowan he was the biggest plagiarist of all time, because many of those ideas helped make the place what it is today. ‘But he was able to take those ideas and make them become reality.’
For example, one of McGrath’s suggestions was to make the front doors of the club a big open panther mouth – a la Luna Park. This went through the process and ended up as the scoreboard at Penrith Stadium.1
Penrith Stadium’s iconic “Panther” Scoreboard – this was a later modified version.
Keith Rhind says,
Roger was always working on ways to stay ahead of what other clubs were doing. I’m sure he used to stay awake at night thinking up new ideas. He once bet me that one of the groups could come up with more than 200 suggestions in a day. I didn’t believe it was possible, but I lost the bet.
Cowan used to take people out of their comfort zones, Rhind says,
The main purpose of the think-tanks was to give the staff confidence in themselves. When Roger first started, there were a lot of problems, and staff morale was very low. We had a lot of internal pilfering and other bad practices, and there was no real structure or systems. These groups got the staff involved, they began to work as a team, and feel they were a part of something when they came to work. And we were getting all these ideas as well.
Kevin McGrath says it made him feel good to be part of those groups. ‘I was only a cellarman, but in those think-ins, I was equal to any of those blokes.’
In the 70s, Random Breath Testing was introduced to NSW. There was great apprehension about the effects it would have on businesses selling alcohol.
At Panthers, however, the legislation had positive effects. The Club’s “think tank” culture enabled it to come up with strategies that would take it to another level of growth.
Two managers went to Victoria, where RBT had been introduced five years earlier. They researched its effects in Victoria and what hotels had done about it. On their returned a think tank involving a number of key staff. It lasted several hours, and about 150 suggestions were listed. Once the list was complete, the more crazy ones were eliminated. The remainder were grouped and analysed.
Because of this one piece of legislation, the seeds were sown for Panthers to broaden its marketing focus. Now it would include family activities, tourism, and greater emphasis on food. The session was probably one of the two most valuable think tanks ever held by the Club.
The other, in 1983, drove the transformation of rugby league in Penrith from its lowest point to an era of success.
What began as informal ‘think-ins’ had become one of the defining engines of Panthers’ growth.
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A removed section from the original Chapter 6: Building a Culture — by Accident and Design. This is Roger Cowan’s descirption of the culture of the licensed club in te early days.
The following reflection from Roger Cowan describes how elements of that culture were already taking shape in the early years — often without formal structure.
The importance of managing the culture arose out of the efforts to find better ways of managing Panthers after its rapid growth from 1984 on, and our difficulties coping with it.
Before that, whatever was happening in the culture was happening quite naturally with no thought of planning it. No matter who takes the position of CEO, the culture of the organisation will reflect many of that person’s values, behaviours and beliefs.
The one thing I believed in most strongly was that getting results required hard work and long hours. I think I probably went a little bit overboard, and the family paid the price. But I led the way and before long I had a management team prepared to give a lot of time to chasing the club’s goals.
Don Ellks, Leo Trevena and Bob Donaghy were the key drivers of the business in the early days, and they were prepared to put in whatever time was necessary to make sure they got things done. Leo left after a few years, but Don and Bob were linchpins for many years.
An interesting story shows how recruitment plays a part in building culture in a team. It concerns the promotion of Don Ellks. He came to Panthers as a casual barman, and it was not long before his qualities started to shine through. He was promoted to a supervisory position.
At that time Bob Donaghy and Leo Trevena were the club’s two assistant managers. We needed another assistant to help cover the long hours of operation and Don was suggested. But I was not sure whether he was the sort of person who could handle the hours. I did not want anyone on the management team who would crumble if asked to work long hours, sometimes for a seven-day week. We were a small club and there were a lot of demands.
I asked Bob and Leo to give Don a really tough roster for a couple of months to see how he would handle it. He came through with flying colours and was promoted to assistant manager – where he continued to shine for more than 25 years.
This is a good example of how a culture builds. By that time there were four of us leading the way and you might imagine that the expectations and beliefs of staff was that you would not get far in Panthers if you were not prepared to give a bit extra in time and effort. In those years none of us had ever heard of culture in a business sense but we were building one anyway.
There was another thing I learned in those early days. Most people are more comfortable when they know there are good controls in place. There was a lot of dishonesty in the culture before I arrived – people believing the game was to get what you could without getting caught.
As the controls started to take effect, employees would sometimes very privately give me the tip where something was still going wrong. The culture was changing. The honest people were starting to dominate. They knew that what was happening was wrong and wanted to do something about it, wanted to stop others from getting what they could.
Most people were willing to work together to make the club successful. All they needed was someone to show the way.
Later accounts from those who worked within the Club at the time reinforce this description of the early culture — particularly the expectation that staff would contribute beyond defined roles, and that leadership was demonstrated through action rather than hierarchy.
A removed section from the original Chapter 6: Building a Culture — by Accident and Design.
At the time of publication (2006), around 25 CEOs of clubs in NSW had spent their ‘formative’ career years at Panthers.
Thomas Paynter is one of those managers.
Now the CEO of Port Macquarie Panthers1, he started at Penrith in 1987, working in the bars, picking up glasses. As he began to work his way up, he was given a couple of opportunities early in the piece, which he says he ‘stuffed up’.
I was lucky enough to be given another chance, and I think that’s why I am here today.
Bathurst was the first of the Panthers amalgamations to be finalised. Paynter was sent there as caretaker for three months, but ended up staying a couple of years, before taking on the job at Port Panthers.
It was a huge learning curve for me. The culture of Penrith was really open. People did their job and knew what was expected of them. Coming into an organisation where there were no systems or procedures in place was very difficult. Everything at Bathurst had been quite dictatorial. People would come up and say, “Well, what should we do?”, and I would answer: “Well, what do YOU think you should do?” I persevered, and a lot of those people picked up and ran with it.
Coming from the culture of Panthers — with its teams, and systems, that sense of natural ownership — and then walking into the other clubs was like stepping back in time.
Bathurst was a bit of a baptism of fire, especially once I knew I was staying. I had never dealt with a board before, never dealt with the community, or even outside suppliers.
But Roger puts very big shoes on people, so you wear them. The fact that Panthers, and Roger – believe that you can do it — you believe you can too.
Janette Hyde2 is the marketing manager of Port Macquarie Panthers. She is one of the original Port staff and has worked at the club for more than 20 years. Panthers amalgamated with the club in 2002. In a classic example of the way that a culture filters through an organisation, Hyde speaks about the management style of her boss, Thomas Paynter. Her words are almost an echo of the words he used to describe the Cowan management philosophy.
Thomas gets the best out of all of us, because he gives us autonomy, he allows us to grow and use our own initiative. He believes we can do it. Underneath the business thing, which is a very big part of it all, there’s also a strong sense of caring about people.
Thomas Paynter’s journey from bar staff at Penrith to CEO of Port Macquarie Panthers illustrates how the club’s culture of trust, responsibility and opportunity translated into leadership beyond the organisation.
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Thomas left the Panthers organisation in November 2008. He spent a further four years in the club industry before moving into the insurance sector, where he has continued in specialist and leadership roles. ↩︎
Janette Hyde retired from Panthers in 2011. She has continued to contribute to the Port Macquarie region through leadership roles in Business Port Macquarie and the Greater Port Macquarie Tourism Association, and was named 2019 Citizen of the Year. ↩︎
Evidence given by some of the Footy Five at the Temby Inquiry – and carried through in newspaper stories at the time – suggested that Roger Cowan had a dictatorship mentality. Some Cowan critics interviewed for this book echo that view.
‘Cowan always had yes-men on the boards’, they said. ‘He was used to getting his own way and resented anyone who questioned his proposals or ideas’.
That’s an interesting comment, but is it true?
It was April 1984 when the Club finally moved to its new home. It walked out the doors of Station Street as the Penrith Leagues Club, and into Mulgoa Road as Panthers. It had taken almost thirteen years to create the physical part of the vision, but other foundations of the Panthers world were being laid all the time.
As soon as a new CEO takes over, a transition begins from the old culture to a new one. A lot of the culture of an organisation develops naturally from the interactions between people. Some of it is driven as a part of the strategic planning. Culture is the unique combination of stories, beliefs, myths and experiences within an organisation that influence how people treat each other and how they expect to be treated.
Every organisation has a culture.
By the late 80s the culture of Panthers became a management project as they searched for better ways to manage the dramatic growth that had occurred.
The words “corporate culture” came to many people’s notice in New South Wales at the time of the Police Royal Commission in 1994. Justice James Wood found that the NSW police culture had been carried through from the senior level to new recruits in an ever-spinning wheel over many years. Because of this, it had been almost impossible to wipe it out, though many had tried.
The Panthers story proves that the theory also works on the other side of that equation. Once the basic elements of a strong, positive culture exist, it too spreads through all levels of the organisation – from the board through management to new employees. The culture at Panthers was resilient and protected by everyone — it has also spread into the broader world of club-land with those who left Panthers.
Bryn Miller is now the CEO of Merrylands RSL Club in Sydney’s west. He worked at the Penrith club through the seventies and eighties, moving up through the structure. His responsibilities included poker machine promotions, entertainment, duty management and managing the new water ski park.
After 14 years in the job, he believed he was ready for another opportunity, but still looks back fondly on his experience at Panthers.
At Panthers we had a very strong team culture. In this ongoing environment of team bonding, you start to believe that there’s nothing outside Panthers. Other people who have moved on have said the same. For a long time afterwards, when you’re talking about Panthers, you still say ‘we’.
There was none of that feeling at other clubs where I worked. You went to work and you collected your pay. If you tried to be creative or do things differently, there was always somebody white-anting you, including the bosses above you. There was none of the structure or discipline that was normal practice at Panthers.
And it wasn’t that Roger went around ranting and raving. He trod quietly. I found some of the situations in those other clubs absolutely abhorrent. But it also taught me a lot.
People who come through Panthers are usually greeted with open arms when they apply for positions with other employers. The discipline that Miller spoke of, the ability to work as part of a team, the creativity, and the leadership skills make them an asset to any organisation.
Panthers’ amalgamations have been an extension of the whole process. Steve Van Zwieten is the General Manager of the Penrith site.1 He said amalgamations have allowed the company to retain many good people they may well have lost.
When top management positions are limited, and people have that drive and ambition, they will move on. Amalgamations allowed us to hang on to those people. We can move them out into our smaller clubs, where they can continue their growth – realise their potential.
‘It worked the other way too. When we went into those new clubs, we found a lot of good people out there, but often they had had no leadership. As we started to work with them and educate them to our systems and culture, we found many that began to flourish. We had stars rising from all over the place.
‘Growing people is certainly one of our strengths’, says Glenn Matthews. ‘You’ve only got to look at the number of club general managers out there that came through this organisation.’
Around 25 CEOs of clubs in NSW spent their ‘formative’ career years at Panthers. One example is Thomas Paynter, who progressed from bar staff at Penrith to CEO of Port Macquarie Panthers. His story is explored in a companion Beyond the Book article.
That culture had its roots in the early days, when employees were encouraged to believe in the importance of their own contribution to success. Some of the earliest examples can be seen in a removed section from the original manuscript, Culture — An Early Instance at Panthers.
Cowan says there was a strong spirit of helping each other, with less emphasis on seniority or status.
Kevin McGrath tells the story of the first big Sunday night show in the auditorium.
‘It was Col Joye, and the staff was just not prepared for the numbers. People came from everywhere. There were no tickets, it was first come, first served, and total chaos. We sent down for more staff, but it was still not enough, so we called Roger. He raced down and said, “OK, what do you want me to do?” We put him behind the bar working the till. We were his boss that night.’
McGrath says he’s worked in a lot of places, and the boss always says to you, ‘My door is always open’. But when it comes to the crunch, he said, it seldom is.
Roger’s door was always open. I had eight kids, and all you got back then was your wages and endowment. I was always getting into financial trouble. Every time I needed bailing out till payday – or help to pay a bill – Roger would help me out.
Glenn Matthews joined the organisation in 1984, and he confirms that the ‘open door’ really always was an open door. And he says as group GM, he continues that policy. ‘Although it’s not really policy’, he says. ’It’s more than that – it’s a culture, a philosophy that seems to have always been there.’
Matthews says not everybody is going to be successful working for Cowan.
If you’re the sort of person who can give yourself your own pats on the back, you’re fine. But if you expected that Roger was going to pat you on the back, well, that just wasn’t going to happen. He supported and encouraged you and showed his faith in you by letting you go off on tangents, and try new things, so you knew you were OK. But that doesn’t work for everybody.
I thrived in that environment anyway; I always knew if I was doing a good job. If I gave something to Roger that he thought needed more work, or wasn’t quite right, he would give it back to me. He was always constructive, never really critical. And I took on board what he said for the next time.
Bryn Miller agrees that there were few actual ‘pats on the back’ from Cowan, but he says they weren’t really needed.
When we started bringing in the big acts, and it was all going so well, he would present the latest figures at a meeting and make the comparisons. We didn’t need him to come out and say, “good job, guys” because we knew. I now have quite a big staff of my own, and I know that some people do need that kind of reinforcement in their work, but it was never really Roger’s style.
Recognition, at Panthers, was often implicit — built into results, trust, and responsibility.
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Steven van Zwieten left Panthers in September 2007. ↩︎
With Mulgoa Road established, the focus shifted to sustaining momentum and extending Panthers’ presence beyond the club itself.
After the blaze of publicity that followed the 1984 opening of the Mulgoa Road premises, Cowan and the management team were looking for ways to keep up the momentum of the Panthers brand.
Around the same time as Mulgoa Road opened its doors, a new water-ski concept had been developed in a Perth suburb. A man-made lake had been created for water-skiing with a novel twist. There was no need for boats. Water skiers queued and were given instructions as they waited their turn. As they neared the top of the queue, they were handed a ski rope. The operator would pull a lever, the rope would become attached to the moving cable and the skier would take off for two or three circuits of the lake.
When the managers of the Perth enterprise heard of Panthers, they made contact. They approached the Club to explore whether such a park might be feasible for Penrith. Representatives of the Club inspected the WA operation and carried out studies to determine whether it could be a worthwhile investment.
Here was a unique and interesting way to build the Panthers brand and generate publicity.
Further, there was a large area of land that had been earmarked for future use, but it was too low-lying for any development – it needed to be filled. Excavating two large lakes would provide the hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of fill for this low area. They would not be paying to dump the excavated fill, nor would they need to buy any to raise the land.
One important point was overlooked in assessing the financial feasibility of this venture – the climates of Perth and Penrith are similar, except that Perth gets most of its rainfall in winter, whereas Penrith is wettest in summer.
In 1987-88, its first year, the park – named Cable’s Ski Park -made a profit, generated enormous publicity and provided all the fill needed for the lower areas of property. It was a win all round.
In the second year, it started to rain in December and continued through most of January – the summer school holiday period, and the most important revenue generating part of the year. The following year the weather pattern was repeated.
It turned out that a dry December-January period was the difference between profit and loss for the entire year. When the novelty died away after a few years, so did the publicity, and the park struggled to break even. For a while it was a great attraction, helping to raise the city’s profile, along with Panthers. Eventually repeated losses could not be justified, and Cable’s was closed in 2002.1
The ski park decision has been criticised by some, but Cowan later reflected that factoring in the fill requirements for other parts of the property meant the real cost of building the park was quite low. He says:.
On the one hand, the fact that it had to be closed down says very clearly that it was a failure. There is another perspective. If we were able to go back and I was faced with the same situation, I would have no hesitation in making the same decision. The gains far exceeded the losses. The ski park did more to boost the Panthers name throughout Australia than anything else we did, apart from moving to Mulgoa Road.
The iconic promotional photo of Roger Cowan at Cables Ski Park.
Another ‘outside the square’ decision for Panthers was the purchase, in 1993, of Nepean Shores. It was an upmarket mobile home village located close to the Nepean River. It had more than 80 cabins, all fully occupied, and several function rooms. The developers had overspent on it and been forced to appoint an administrator, so it came on the market for much less than its cost.
Management inspected the site. They discovered that the current income was less than the holding costs of interest, rates and maintenance – but not much less.
The conference rooms were a strong attraction. They had been tastefully constructed and were practical and functional. The Club’s conference market was growing, and business was often limited by availability of rooms. Nepean Shores could open up new opportunities.
Cowan says Nepean Shores had been finished to a high standard, in fact it was probably overdone for the income it could generate. The infrastructure, although a bit run-down, could be revitalised at a relatively small cost. The purchase price was $3 million. To the Board and management, it seemed an excellent investment with the potential to be further developed for a good cash flow.
Nepean Shores enhanced the status of Panthers as a provider of a range of conference facilities. It became a venue of choice for Panthers’ management and Board conferences. It remained part of the Panthers portfolio for many years and proved to be one of the Club’s most successful commercial investments.
Roger Cowan believes that the physical side of building a business – the buildings, infrastructure, equipment and systems – make up only a very small part of the whole when compared with the other side – the people.
It’s the people who make it work, the relationships and networks, the supporters and the critics. The culture of a company develops automatically as the various influences take dominance for periods. The philosophies, values, beliefs, tall stories and historical landmarks combine to affect decision making and strategy in a dramatic way.
Strange to say, culture was an important concept at Panthers even before the word became a recognised part of the management language.
Behind each of these decisions was a consistent thread — the belief that while buildings and assets matter, it is people, relationships and culture that ultimately determine success – a theme that would continue to shape the Club in years ahead.
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Cables reopened in 2009 as Cables Wake Park and continues operate under a lease from Penrith Rugby League Club Ltd. ↩︎
Long before Mulgoa Road, the Club had already begun to adopt a deliberate approach to property.
From the time that Cowan took on the job, the Club’s philosophy was to invest in property that could support future development – even if it meant increasing debt.
In 1965 the Penrith Rugby League Club was boxed in on all sides. The main parking area for its customers was the Council Swimming Pool on the opposite side of Station Street, or on the streets nearby. The old clubhouse had been built in 1955 and provided facilities for a Boy’s Club. In 1963, a new clubhouse was completed next door, and the old building was dedicated to Boys Club Facilities.
By 1970, the Club needed a major extension, and the Boys Club building had to be demolished. It was replaced by the Police Youth Club, further North on Station Street, in a project funded, uniquely at the time, jointly by the Club and Penrith City Council.
From the time the Club had overcome its financial problems and secured a position in the first division rugby league competition, Cowan and the committee looked for solutions to a parking problem that could only become worse as business grew. The Club quietly began to buy the houses surrounding the site. When the strategy became known, two of the closest residents decided to dig their heels in and hold out for some absolutely extraordinary prices.
As the Club’s fortunes improved, management increasingly found itself paying premium prices for properties it wished to acquire. One five-acre property on the opposite side of Reserve Street would make an ideal car parking area. This and an adjacent property were on the market, but the owners were adamant they would not sell to the Club.
By this time Cowan had established the private family company, Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd.1 When that company made a lower — but still very reasonable — offer to the owners they happily accepted. After settlement, the properties were transferred to the Club at the same cost. Gradually, the Club acquired all the properties around it and on both sides of Reserve Street. Some houses along Station Street were also purchased and rented out until the land would be needed.2
In the late 60s, the Club had also purchased some holiday cabins at Bendalong, south of Nowra, for $25,000. The club sponsored an active fishing club at that time, and it was a popular venue for members looking for a subsidised holiday. A ballot was held each year to see who the lucky tenants over the Christmas holidays would be. That property was sold in the 1990s for $900,000.
Allawah Cabins — Bendalong. Click image to enlarge.
Mulgoa Road was added to the property portfolio in 1971.
Even with the properties it had purchased, the Club was still boxed in and very limited in its potential for growth. Parking would always be a nightmare on this site and the use of the swimming pool carpark by the Club’s customers was causing conflict. It was in the middle of a residential area and noise complaints were building momentum. Long-term planning for this site would be difficult.
However, if all the properties were consolidated, it would be an ideal site for a shopping centre, and around 1978 there was interest from a developer. A price of $3.25 million was negotiated subject to council approval of a shopping centre and the consolidation of all the properties including some roads.3 That caused difficulties, lengthy delays, unforeseen charges and a lot of bitterness but it was finally achieved. At that time, the book value of the properties was less than $1 million and it was a good profit for the club.
But it all hinged on Council approval of a shopping centre. Cowan says the first response was an almost blunt: “no chance”.
More work, feasibilities, and growth forecasts eventually led to agreement for a major retailer — but no specialty shops.
However, shopping centres depend on specialty shops. Further negotiations led to a revised proposal, but the permitted mix remained too limited to be viable, and time was passing.
In the meantime, the developer was spending more money on buying neighbouring properties and updating plans and information for Council.Finally, the development application was approved, and the Club was paid. Within a few days the developer sold the site to another developer for $7 million. The other properties purchased by the developer would allow for a shopping centre quite a bit better than the one we had approved. Nearly four years had elapsed from the time the deal had been agreed. A relatively small annual appreciation would have added well over a million to the value of the Club’s portion. Long delays cost money. And we did not have the experience of developers who could see other ways of doing things for a better result.
The first developer certainly made a nice profit and, eventually, so did Panthers. However, the sequence of events gave rise to one of the enduring myths surrounding Cowan and later became one of the matters that prompted a police investigation.4
This willingness to think beyond conventional boundaries would continue to shape decisions — not just in land, but in how the Panthers brand evolved.
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Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd becomes very important in this narrative. Phyro is derived from the names Phyllis and Roger. ↩︎
One of these houses was 138 Station St, where the Cowan family lived from 1968-1972. ↩︎
A removed section from the original Chapter 5: Building the Basics — Business Principles and Property. This examines the challenges faced in negotiating with Council over the Station Street site.
Roger reflected that certain individuals within Council held the view — and perhaps the expectation — that he would eventually be taken down a notch or two. To this day one aspect of this attitude irks Cowan, describing it as one of his worst memories.
While others involved in the negotiations may have viewed the issues differently, Roger believed the Club received little recognition for its contribution to the community. In his view, the charges and conditions imposed during the sale and development process reflected a lack of support for what Panthers was attempting to achieve.
I think the Club was treated very unfairly by Council. Before we could start building on Mulgoa Road, we had to sell the Station Street site. Council made it extraordinarily difficult. One of the conflicts related to two roads on the Station Street property. One of them was no more than a line on a map. It had never been a road. But the only way we were going to be able to sell that property was to negotiate with Council. The price Council sought was $850,000 — around a quarter of the total amount the Club expected to receive for the entire property.
I tried everything to get a better deal. I told them of a similar case where a club had been able to negotiate an agreement with its local council to close a road for the nominal sum of $1, as a sign of support for the club.
Our involvement in our community was far greater than that of the other club. For instance, we had previously agreed to a joint venture with Council to build a Police Citizen’s Boys Club in Penrith. It was the first boys club ever built without the need to raise funds from the public. We were sponsoring most sports in the area. On top of this the Club’s work to get Penrith to the elite level of rugby League had dramatically increased the city’s profile. I thought we had earned the right to support from Council, rather than obstruction. The city was benefiting on a number of levels from the work we had done, and it was giving nothing back. In fact it was profiteering from our planning.
I told them what we were planning to do would be a tremendous boost for Penrith. But all they saw were the problems, rather than the advantages.
The roads incident was not the only problem imposed on us by Council over that property sale. Another episode contributed to a very nasty police investigation a few years later.
One of the key issues underlying these negotiations related to what are known as paper roads. Paper roads are sections of land set aside by councils for roads in the future. According to Pat Sheehy:
Council planners had discovered the paper road in earlier negotiations for the property. It meant that Panthers did not own the whole site, with the result that Council said “OK, if you want to buy that land back from us, this is what we’re going to charge. All this happened before I was on council, but as far as Panthers was concerned it was absolutely exorbitant.
Robinsons 1957 Street Directory showing Frederick St ( a “paper road”) between Station & Wooddriff Sts. The other street in the negotiation was Park St.
Cowan said the problems extended beyond the property sale and continued into the approval process for the new site:
Council imposed a per hectare sewerage fee on the property based on the total area of land we owned. We were planning to build the club on an area of about 8 hectares. Most of the land was flood-prone, so you couldn’t build on it anyway. But we were hit with this huge bill, based on 86 hectares.
We had to negotiate to defer the payment, but this also became an issue. Even though we eventually came to an agreement, there are still people on Council who believe that Panthers ripped off the Council over that sewerage fee. Under the circumstances, that’s quite laughable
These issues illustrate the complexity of the negotiations and the differing perspectives that would continue to shape relations between the Club and Council.
There was one more monumental event for the Penrith Leagues Club in the seventies.
In 1971, the club became aware of a property on Mulgoa Road that was for sale for around $2 million. It was nearly 100 hectares, with large sections of swampy dairy farmland. Parts of it extended all the way to the Nepean River.
In Cowan’s eyes, Mulgoa Road was destined to be a major link in the future. The part of the property fronting Mulgoa Road, about 10 hectares, had already been zoned for residential development. Because of the residential zoning, he saw the purchase as a low-risk strategy, although it would be a massive investment for such a small club. The land would provide enormous development options for both the registered club and the football club. He became a passionate advocate of acquiring the property.
When he first floated the idea of buying the Mulgoa Road property, most people thought he was crazy. The price on the property was $2.25 million, not an amount that could be shrugged off easily. It had to be financed and the Club’s bankers refused. Undaunted, Cowan negotiated to transfer financial dealings to another bank where the management could see that the Club was going places and was worthy of support.
The criticism came from many quarters. One local newspaper ran the headline, “Roger’s Pipe Dream”.
‘People called it Frog Hollow’, says Don Ellks, one of the senior managers at the time. He says people were either laughing or sceptical. ‘It was very difficult to convince the Board, but Roger persisted and eventually won out. It showed enormous vision when he was being ridiculed from every quarter.’
Don Feltis, later a director at Panthers, was at the time a member of the police force in Penrith. He remembers a police inspector friend telling him the purchase was the worst decision the Club ever made. ‘It’s too far out of town. No-one is going to go that far to go to a club.’
Anyone who has ever visited Panthers’ Penrith club, exiting the M4 and travelling along Mulgoa Road, will know that the club is the focal point of a thriving commercial centre outside the city’s CBD.
But in 1971, once it left Penrith’s main street, Mulgoa Road was little more than a country road. It paralleled the Nepean River, heading out in the direction of Warragamba Dam. Along the way it passed through Wallacia, with its impressive Tudor-style hotel, seen by some at the time as an alternative to Medlow Bath’s Hydro Majestic for honeymoons and romantic trysts.
Former director Tom Wilson agreed that many people thought Roger was mad when he proposed the purchase.
But they thought he was mad about a lot of things. At one time we went and had a look at Australiana Village, out along the Hawkesbury near Windsor,when it came up for sale. We looked at buying other land in Penrith too, but at the time we thought it might be overextending. But Roger could see how that whole area was going to go ahead.
Phyllis Cowan remembers that Jamison Park — now one of Penrith’s major parklands with playing fields and recreational areas — was also considered by Cowan as a possibility to expand the club. It was covered in thick scrub and even further out of town.1
There was a lot of discussion about the land purchase, Max Connors recalls.
Many people in town were against it and some on the Board were not sure. But Roger was very persuasive, he saw it as a great opportunity.
Barry Hubbard said the criticism came from locals, club members and from Council. People were saying,
Why on Earth would they want to buy that swamp? You’ll never be able to build anything on it.
The view from corner of Mulgoa & Jamison Rds looking west. (Unknown source.)
After about four months of deliberations, the Board finally agreed to the purchase.
Penrith Rugby League Club 1973 Annual Report – middle page spread. Main image shows the Mulgoa Rd property with various points of interest. The smaller images are an early aerial shot of Penrith Park and an artsis impression of a club design. Click image to enlarge.
Hubbard’s first visit to the property did not go well. He had seen the property from the road, but once the decision was made, he and another director, Murray Clarke, decided they wanted a closer look.
We were in Murray’s four-wheel drive. We drove in about 100 metres, and the car was up to its axles in mud. “You’d better get out and have a look”, Murray said. I stepped down, and I was up to my knees. We eventually got the car out, and I went back to the club to clean myself up before I went home.
The boardroom had its own bathroom, so Hubbard decided to wash his trousers in the basin. It was the classic scenario of ‘one of these days, you’re going to get caught …’ . When sprung by the chairman, in his boxers, doing his laundry in the washbasin, he explained that he had just inspected the club’s new site.
Phyllis Cowan says she could never have imagined in 1971 what the Club would become. She could see the drive her husband had, though.
I think that Roger knew, right from the start. And I think if he was still there, he’d still have the same dreams and visions. He was always very conscious of what it was doing for Penrith, that it was putting the area on the map. His sense of community was very strong. Even in the early days he often talked about Penrith becoming a major centre in the state, and how the Club could help.
Pat Sheehy has been on Penrith Council since 19872, he says:
Panthers has been an asset to the city of Penrith for the very simple reason that people found out where we were. So, we benefited as a community by that exposure – and that advertising didn’t cost us anything.
The relationship between Panthers and Council has at times been symbiotic, and at others almost parasitic, says Sheehy.
What stage it was at depended on where you were standing. Often Panthers thought that we were the greatest mongrels on Earth, and just as often council thought the same about Panthers.
But the two have worked together on many community projects and are always ready to forget their differences in times of local crisis, such as bushfires and floods.
Council was particularly opposed to the development of a club on Mulgoa Road. One of the reasons given was the land’s proximity to the Jamison Hospital and the noise that a new club might generate. But the current club was quite close to the town, in what was essentially a residential area. Ellks says the neighbours were already starting to complain about the noise, and there were some problems with young people hanging around in the street. The Club was growing, so the complaints could only increase.
Although he wasn’t on council at the time of the purchase, Sheehy was living and working in Penrith, and has heard much of the history from council colleagues.
Roger had the vision for that land long before anyone else ever saw it. All the pundits around town were saying, “What do they want to move there for? It’s on the edge of bloody town, no-one’s going to go there”.
He was able to cut through a lot of the wowserism that was current in council in those days. I would think that most councillors were middle-aged men in grey suits, who were not really into the whole club scene.
And he had no background in clubs – it was quite brave. What he was seeing was enormous potential, where most of us were still seeing the country town where we’d grown up. He had this whole concept of what Panthers could become, which I don’t believe was shared by many people. He certainly had to convince the board – and he didn’t get a lot of support from the people on council at the time.
Yes, he was definitely seen as an upstart. Especially wanting to set up this huge expanse of club-land. They thought he was biting off more than he can chew, driving too far, too quickly. To some extent, I think the belief – and hope – in council was that this bloke will end up being put in his place.
That thinking was to continue, at least in some quarters, over the entire Cowan years at Panthers. One particular aspect irked Cowan for the rest of his life — how Council managed the disposal of two roads on the Station Street property. For further background seeBeyond the Book — Negotiating with Council: The Station Street Road Closures.
With the purchase of the Mulgoa Road property going ahead, Roger Cowan faced the prospect of raising the money to develop the site. Cowan came up with some unusual ideas about how to do it, says Tom Wilson.
Anyone who knows Penrith knows that there’s vast deposits of sand and gravel under the land all along the river, right through to Castlereagh. The quarries on the northern side of the city have been operating for many years. One of Roger’s early concepts to finance the development was to mine some of the blue metal under the new site. The idea was to sub-contract the work out to BMG, who would take it over the river to Emu Plains and process it.
The concept did not get very far. There was no way it would ever be approved, given the position and the need for thousands of noisy trucks plying back and forth on the edge of town, holding up traffic on the narrow bridge across the river. But he said it was typical of Cowan’s style, to look beyond what’s in front of your face and see what could be.
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Jamison Park already included playing fields, the scrub referred to here was at the southern end of the Park. ↩︎
Pat Sheehy retired from Penrith City Council in 2008. He passed away in 2025. ↩︎
With a broader audience now emerging, attention turned to what would bring people in — and keep them coming back.
Another early innovation was an in-house band, fully employed by the club. Rhind believes it was one of the first in the industry — and unheard of for such a small club. At the time, the Board was resisting putting poker machines in the upstairs auditorium area.
Roger persisted, finally convincing them to trial half a dozen machines upstairs for four hours on a Saturday night — between 6 and 10pm. He and a couple of the assistant managers would carry them upstairs and bring them back down again later.
The trial was successful; the figures increased, and the machines went upstairs permanently.
Rhind says he and Cowan were both in their thirties but most of the Board at the time were older men who sometimes found it a bit more difficult to cope with all the change being promoted by management.
However, they all shared a quality that would help overcome obstacles. They had a strong sense of ownership of the club they had helped build, and they wanted it to be secure for the future.
There were no hidden agendas and no ambitions of personal gain. It was about loyalty to a common cause. It was their club, and they would do whatever was necessary to protect it.
In the early 1970s the club began to put on prawn nights, other special nights, Sunday afternoon concerts and talent quests. Max Connors recalls,
Mum and Dad would come in for whatever was on, and they would always put a few bucks in the pokies. Roger was doing surveys all the time. He told the board that we had to start to give a little back to people to encourage them to come to the club, even though we might lose a little money on the prawn nights.
Bringing in the couples meant that women were starting to come to the club. It was changing the whole social scene. Back then, there were not many places that women could go, especially if they were on their own. They could come in either with a partner, or a girlfriend, and enjoy a regular night out.
The final shift away from the club’s traditional male bastion came with the launch of what became known as the “purple passion pit”, one of the new extensions to the club. Kevin McGrath remembers,
The room was quite stunning, with beautiful décor, purple furniture and fittings and large fish-tanks along one wall. It had poker machines, comfortable lounges and a full bar and it very quickly became the most popular area in the club.
Also, to attract the mixed market, the club began to focus on entertainment. This was an extraordinary time for the Penrith Leagues Club, says Bryn Miller, who was part of the club’s entertainment team in the seventies.
The first auditorium only held 580 people, so by today’s standards, it was not a big room. Don Ellks was the entertainment manager at the time, and he and Cowan formed an association with an agent, John Hansen. The Board approved their recommendation that the club set up its own entertainment agency as a joint venture with Hansen.
Through the new company, Prestige Attractions1, the club set out to bring in major overseas acts — performers who were appearing at leading Sydney nightclubs such as Chequers2, as well as venues like St George Leagues and Souths Juniors — artists such as Roy Orbison, Rolf Harris, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Hollies, and the Mamas and the Papas.
But we would get them on Tuesday nights — traditionally a dead night in the entertainment industry. Most artists didn’t get bookings for Tuesdays, so we could get them at a good rate. We would put on prawn nights, and beef and burgundy nights, and still charge reasonable prices. These shows were every second Tuesday, and the response was phenomenal. People came from all over Sydney.
We needed to find a way to get more people in, and at the time, there was a fountain in the middle of the auditorium. We ripped that out, and the room was able to hold 800.
We started to advertise in Sydney newspapers, which was our first real exposure out of Penrith. Here we were, this little hick country town, and we were really getting known out there.
Miller adds,
Sundays were another big night. It was Australian rock night, with bands such as Skyhooks, Sherbert, the Little River Band and INXS appearing in the auditorium.
But the building of success inside the club was creating pressures that could not be resolved within its existing footprint.
1982 Advertisement for the week’s rock entertainment.
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Prestige Attractions was a joint entertainment venture involving Penrith Leagues Club and entertainment promoter John Hansen during the 1970s. ↩︎
Chequers was one of Sydney’s best-known nightclub venues during the 1960s and 1970s, regularly hosting major Australian and international entertainers ↩︎
The following material draws upon club publications from the early and mid-1970s, later interviews and recollections from former Panthers staff and executives.
By the mid-1970s, Penrith Rugby League Club was doing something few licensed clubs in Australia would even have contemplated — experimenting with computerised gaming and security systems.
The project emerged from a practical problem. As poker machine revenue increased across the club industry, so too did concerns about theft, scams, inefficient cash handling and poor operational oversight. Panthers had already experienced some of these issues directly. Roger Cowan believed tighter systems and better information could reduce losses and improve efficiency.
What followed was an ambitious venture into electronics and computer technology through a company known as F.C. Electronics Pty Ltd.
Contemporary club material described F.C. Electronics as producing “probably the world’s most sophisticated poker machine security system”. While that language reflected the promotional enthusiasm of the period, there is little doubt the system was unusually advanced for an Australian club environment of the 1970s.
The system attempted to electronically monitor poker machine activity from a central control point.
Early F.C. Electronics monitoring reports published by Panthers during the 1970s showed the system identifying jackpots, abnormal machine activity and security irregularities. Click image to enlarge.
According to material published by the club, poker machine events were coded and transmitted to television monitors around the club, allowing supervisors to immediately identify jackpots and machine activity. The system also attempted to monitor irregularities including abnormal wheel movement, door openings and jackpot inconsistencies.
The operation relied on technology that, at the time, would have appeared extraordinary to most club employees and patrons. The club’s own promotional material featured computer consoles, printers, monitoring screens and electronic reporting systems — all at a time when many organisations still relied entirely on manual record keeping.
Promotional page for F.C. Electronics showed an interconnected monitoring and reporting system linking poker machines to central computer and television displays. Click image to enlarge.
Former Panthers executive Bryn Miller later recalled that the system was “so far ahead of its time” that most clubs did not even possess a computer when Panthers was experimenting with electronic monitoring and reporting.
The project extended beyond poker machine security. F.C. Electronics also produced industrial control equipment and commercial products including lighting dimmers and environmental control systems. Club publications noted that the company’s capabilities had expanded sufficiently for it to seek work beyond the club industry itself.
Yet the venture also carried substantial cost and risk.
Club material acknowledged that F.C. Electronics operated at a financial loss during part of this period, while Roger Cowan later conceded that Panthers may have persisted with the project longer than it should have. Had the technology evolved commercially the way he hoped, the rewards may have been significant. Instead, the project became one of several ambitious experiments that pushed the club into areas rarely explored by licensed clubs of the era.
Club journal material outlined the broader ambitions of F.C. Electronics, which expanded into industrial and commercial electronic products beyond gaming systems. Click image to enlarge.
Even so, many who observed the system believed its core ideas eventually became standard throughout the gaming industry. Automated monitoring, centralised reporting, electronic jackpot recording and machine data analysis are now routine parts of modern club gaming operations.
In that sense, the Feeney Electronics project reflected something larger about the Panthers administration during the Cowan years. The club was rarely content simply to follow established practice. Whether the experiments succeeded or failed, there was often a willingness to try ideas that others considered unrealistic, premature or unnecessarily ambitious.
Feeney Electronics was one of the clearest examples of that philosophy in action.
Image Credits: All images in this post — including the feature image — are from Panthers Annual Reports. These were kindly provided by The Ausburn Collection.
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Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 