Glenn Matthews Image Source: The Panthers: Men in Black
Glenn Matthews
Accountant, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Executive Officer
Few people contributed to—and witnessed—the modern development of Penrith Panthers as closely as Glenn Matthews.
Joining Panthers in March 1984, on the very day the club’s administration moved into its new Mulgoa Road premises, Matthews would spend the next twenty-six years helping guide the organisation through one of the most significant periods in its history. During that time he progressed from accountant to Chief Financial Officer and ultimately succeeded Roger Cowan as Chief Executive Officer in 2005.
His career spanned the club’s transformation from a rapidly expanding regional licensed club into one of Australia’s leading community organisations, providing a unique perspective on both its growth and the challenges that accompanied that success.
Role in the Narrative
Glenn Matthews appears throughout the middle and later pages of the Panthers, Passion & Politics narrative.
Unlike many figures whose involvement centred primarily on football or board administration, Matthews worked across almost every aspect of the organisation. His responsibilities evolved well beyond finance to include commercial development, strategic planning, football administration and executive leadership.
He was directly involved in many of the defining events covered throughout this series, including:
the move into the Mulgoa Road premises;
Panthers’ commercial expansion during the 1980s;
development of the organisation’s management culture;
the organisational restructure of the early 90s;
football administration;
the Temby Inquiry, the conflict preceding it and its aftermath;
Roger Cowan’s retirement;
the Global Financial Crisis;
development of Panthers Property Trust;
Panthers’ transition into a new phase of executive leadership.
Because his career bridged both Roger Cowan’s administration and the years immediately following, Matthews provides an important perspective on the continuity—and eventual evolution—of the Panthers organisation.
Background
Born: 17 September
Raised in Campbelltown before later settling in Western Sydney, Matthews developed an early interest in mathematics and accounting while simultaneously pursuing competitive barefoot water skiing, eventually becoming an Australian representative coach.
He also developed a lifelong passion for endurance sport. A long-time member of the Panthers Triathlon Club, Matthews completed eighteen Ironman-distance events, including the Ironman World Championship at Kona, Hawaii. His achievements earned recognition as an Ironman Legend — an accomplishment reflecting the discipline, persistence and resilience that also characterised his professional career.
He joined Panthers in March 1984 as an accountant – at the very momemnt Panthers was moving from Station Street to Mulgoa Rd.
We looked at it [the Mulgoa Road building] and thought there was just no way the place was going to be ready. But somehow it became ready … People justed pitched in and got stuff done.
from Western Weekender Podcast: On the Record 26 February 2024
That spirit of shared responsibility and willingness to step beyond formal job descriptions would become one of the defining characteristics of Panthers during Matthews’ career—and one of the organisational strengths he most admired.
Panthers Roles
Accountant
Chief Financial Officer
Reserve Grade Trainer
Senior Executive
Group General Manager
Chief Executive Officer (2005-2010)
Throughout his career Matthews accepted responsibilities well beyond traditional financial management, becoming involved in commercial ventures, organisational development, football administration and strategic planning across the wider Panthers Group.
Leadership and Culture
Matthews has consistently acknowledged Roger Cowan as the greatest influence on his development as a leader.
Working alongside Cowan during Panthers’ formative years exposed him to a management philosophy built upon trust, accountability and personal responsibility. Matthews has often recalled the lessons he learnt about treating people with respect, empowering staff to make decisions and responding to mistakes with honesty rather than blame.
One incident early in his career, when he admitted to a significant financial forecasting error, became a defining leadership lesson. Rather than reacting with anger, Cowan focused on solving the problem—an approach Matthews later identified as fundamental in shaping his own leadership style.
Those experiences would later influence Matthews’ own approach to leadership as he assumed increasingly senior responsibilities within the organisation.
Contribution to Panthers
Matthews’ contribution extended well beyond finance.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he became closely involved in commercial development, organisational planning, tourism initiatives, football administration and strategic projects across the Panthers Group.
Among those projects was the development of the Panthers Cable Ski Park, where Matthews became actively involved in both management and promotion, later overseeing its redevelopment through new accommodation and tourism initiatives. His willingness to move beyond the traditional boundaries of accounting reflected the increasingly integrated management culture that characterised Panthers during this period.
Cheif Executive Officer
Matthews succeeded Roger Cowan as Chief Executive Officer in 2005 during one of the most challenging periods in Panthers’ history.
Rather than inheriting an era of rapid expansion, he assumed leadership as the organisation confronted increasing complexity, significant football decisions, the Global Financial Crisis and growing regulatory pressures affecting licensed clubs, and a Board grappling with the fallout from a major, public and damaging Inquiry.
Matthews has reflected that while Cowan’s strengths lay in innovation and growth, his own strengths were better suited to leading organisations through periods of operational and financial challenge.
Relevance to Events Described
Many of the major events described throughout this series either involved Matthews directly or occurred while he occupied senior executive positions.
His experience provides valuable insight into the reasoning behind many of the decisions discussed elsewhere in the narrative, particularly those involving organisational development, commercial strategy, football administration and executive leadership.
His experience provides valuable insight into the reasoning behind many of the decisions discussed elsewhere in the narrative, particularly those involving organisational development, commercial strategy, football administration and executive leadership.
Legacy
Glenn Matthews occupies a distinctive place in Panthers’ history.
He experienced the organisation as a young accountant during the move to Mulgoa Road, helped shape many of its commercial and organisational developments, and ultimately became the executive entrusted with leading the club following Roger Cowan’s retirement.
His career spans one of the most significant periods of change in Panthers’ history and provides an important link between the organisation’s formative vision and its emergence as one of Australia’s leading licensed club organisations.
Although remembered as a senior executive, Matthews’ influence extended well beyond management. His commitment to developing people, embracing new challenges and serving the organisation across multiple disciplines reflected a culture in which leadership was earned through contribution rather than position.
A removed section from the original Chapter 13: Amalgamations Not Takeovers.This section originally during the discussion of the growing disagreement over Panthers’ amalgamation strategy. It was removed from the main narrative because it moves beyond the events themselves into Roger Cowan’s interpretation of why he and Ron Mulock — and, more broadly, management and some directors — appeared to see the future of Panthers so differently.
It is retained here because that interpretation offers another perspective on a conflict that would become increasingly important in the chapters that followed.
Ron Mulock had been critical about Panthers getting ‘too big’ even before the amalgamations strategy surfaced. This was also the strongly held view of the Treasurer, Michael Egan, and many in the NSW Labor Party.
Cowan used a particularly vivid analogy to describe what he saw as Mulock’s inflexibility. When a shark swims into a net, it is unable to change direction or reverse out of it. It will keep swimming in the same direction; nose into the net, until it drowns.
A number of observations and experiences added to my feeling that Mulock suffered from a similar inflexibility in his thought processes. Once he had made up his mind to go in a certain direction, once he believed he was right, there was no turning. No amount of new information could convince him to reconsider his position. On one particular occasion, when the rugby league merger saga was at it nastiest, I arranged to meet Mulock to see if we could sort out our problems on a man-to-man basis. At the finish of that meeting, I was left with the impression that he had not heard a word I said.
Cowan believes that this type of inflexibility would be a fatal flaw in the CEO of an organisation with close to a thousand employees. But Mulock’s experience was in a law office and a seat in politics – places where inflexibility may even be advantageous.
Cowan saw an important difference between the pressures operating on business leaders and politicians. A CEO, in his view, had to respond continually to changing business data, technology, expert opinion, personnel and economic circumstances. A decision that worked yesterday might fail tomorrow. Flexibility was therefore essential.
The Panthers belief in teams, participation, flexibility, leadership, Twin Citizenship1, creativity and other management values was philosophically in conflict with what Cowan believes to be the narrow world view taken by Mulock.
But the argument of what is important to a politician has to be raised here too. Cowan thought in big pictures where there were no limits. His vision of Panthers was always bigger, better and more beautiful than it had achieved so far. He was thinking like that when he took over management of the tiny club with 26 poker machines and was still thinking the same way when he could see Panthers as a state-wide organisation with many successful branches – an organisation that now has such a solid backing of assets that it would be able to survive the worst downturns.
Supporting rugby league to Cowan was a long-term challenge that would be met by all round growth and success rather than an annual drive to outdo the extravagances of the previous year. His vision for Panthers was always long term rather than short term, looking at possibilities way into the future and always seeking ways of taking advantage.
That vision included rugby league supporters all over the state driving TV audiences when Panthers was competing. The possibility that one day supporters may have to pay to watch some rugby league games on television was a consideration in establishing Panther clubs in other areas. If it never happened, it would make no difference.
Politicians probably need to be more focused on tomorrow’s headlines and the elections next year. CEOs know that the decisions they make tomorrow can have an impact on outcomes years into the future.
It was little wonder the two were in conflict. From Cowan’s point of view:
I always had a strong feeling that the real conflict between Mulock and me was the conflict between the big picture view of a long-term future and a narrow short-term view centred on a football team. Perhaps my frustration with this narrow approach was shared by Neville Wran. Mulock briefly served as his deputy around 1984.
Graham Richardson, in his bookWhatever it Takes, quotesthe Labor elder describing Mulock in extremely disparaging terms. I choose not to repeat his words, but Wran’s description demonstrates very clearly that I am not the only person who was ever reduced to sheer frustration when dealing with Ron Mulock.
Mulock always seemed to me to be narrowly focused on Penrith and the here and now. His attitude as the Club grew seemed to indicate a belief that a medium sized club supporting the Penrith rugby league team was the be all and end all. The growth of the Club and its expansion into other parts of the state were way outside his range of vision, even had he the benefit of the world’s most powerful telescope. Of course, he would probably have never held himself accountable if he had been successful in influencing strategy that terminated growth to the point where the Club proved to be too small to be competitive in an increasingly professional rugby league competition.
Now I come to think of it, the shark analogy also fitted most of the Five. In hindsight, it occurs to me that my conflict with them might have had the same roots – and I failed to see it at the time. I was dealing with some directors holding a narrow and limited vision for Panthers. It seemed to me that most of the conflict in the boardroom was about strategy for elections. The long-term success of Panthers seemed a secondary consideration.2
Barrister Terrence Lynch has observed the opposition of two views when he attended the 2005 AGM.
Roger gave his address, and he was speaking of the club, its growth, its amenities and the new sites. Later, Ron Mulock and some others spoke, strongly criticising the amalgamations.
Each group had an entirely different perception. The Mulock group – was speaking of a Penrith identity. It was about geography and their football team. , and I don’t think that was Roger’s conception at all. Neither party ever seemed to recognise that they were proceeding from entirely different premises, so all they could do was snarl at each other.
They were early joiners, the club was small, Penrith was much more remote and they all knew each other. So there’s all the history and networks and personal associations.
It’s resistance to change, it’s hanging on to the past and what you know. It’s what many older people tend to do. They identify with the institutions that are part of their lives, be it the suburb, city, country where they live – or the customs and culture of their society, or their club. If you try to change that, it feels like an attack on them.
And though they’d never admit it, to an extent, his success in building the club and the brand outside Penrith fed their pride about the city, and in fact, even reinforced their sense of their special connection to it. To them, Penrith is a very discrete notion, and they could never conceive it in the way that Roger did.
Seen this way, the disagreement was about more than amalgamations. It reflected two different conceptions of Panthers itself. One began with Penrith — its history, its football team and its local identity. The other increasingly saw Panthers as an organisation capable of carrying that identity far beyond Penrith.
Neither perspective made conflict inevitable. But if Lynch was right that the two sides were arguing from different premises without fully recognising it, it helps explain why agreement became increasingly difficult to find.
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The concept of “Twin Citizenship” comes Charles Handy’s book, The Empty Raincoat. This book had a powerful influence over the Panthers management team through the 1990s. The concept illustrated the fact that a team member can simultaneously hold strong loyalties, sense of belonging and responsibilities to multiple distinct groups. This was an extraordinarily important concept when it came to the amalgamation philosophies with venue management and staff having a strong sense of ownership of their local operational and strategic efforts while also understanding, supporting and owning the needs of the entire Panthers Group. ↩︎
The reference to “the Five” reflects terminology used retrospectively in the original manuscript. The group later became publicly known as the “Footy Five”; that label and its effect on interpretation are discussed in Beyond the Book: The Footy Five — The Name That Rewrote the Story. ↩︎
Today, the mental side of elite sport is taken for granted. Professional teams employ sports psychologists and mental skills coaches. Visualisation, relaxation techniques, controlled breathing and the management of anxiety and confidence have become familiar parts of preparing athletes to perform under pressure.
It was rather different in 1978.
More than four decades later, Phil Gould recalled one of his earliest encounters with those ideas — at Penrith, through Roger Cowan.
Gould told the story during an episode of Six Tackles with Gus in September 2021. The discussion had turned to Parramatta’s use of a mental skills coach during the NRL finals and to the relative importance of the physical and mental sides of elite sport.
For Gould, there was little doubt. At the highest level, he suggested, the mental component accounted for perhaps 95 per cent of performance. Players needed to learn how to control their thinking under pressure, he said, and that was a skill that took time to develop.
Then he remembered Roger.
An Experiment at Penrith
Gould described Cowan as the man who ran the Leagues Club and someone who read widely about self-improvement. Roger had long been particularly interested in hypnosis and in techniques, he believed could help people get the best out of themselves.
In May 1978, he decided to try some of those ideas with the Penrith first-grade team.
Gould’s memory of the occasion, 43 years later, compressed the chronology a little. He recalled the match as only his second game in first grade. In fact, he had debuted for Penrith in 1976.
But the match was a significant first for the young Gould.
It was his first game as captain of the Penrith Panthers.
The previous Sunday, 30 April, club captain Mick Stephenson had played his final match. Mounting injuries had finally brought his career to an end, but he went out with a remarkable performance. Penrith had lost its first five matches of the 1978 season; against North Sydney, Stephenson scored two tries as the Panthers recorded their first win, 17–16.
The following week, the captaincy passed to Gould.
He was just 19.
Penrith’s opponents on Sunday, 7 May were Eastern Suburbs. Gould recalls Bob Fulton being captain-coach of Easts that year but it was Arthur Beetson However, for this game at the Sydney Sports Ground Beetson did not play and Fulton was the captain.
Gould remembers the young Panthers being given virtually no chance.
Roger decided to try something different.
Shoes Off, Lie on the Floor
Before the game, Gould recalls, the Penrith players walked from the Sports Ground to a nearby hotel. Pubs were closed on Sundays in those days, but Roger knew someone who allowed the team inside.
The players removed their shoes and lay on the floor.
Roger began what Gould describes as a relaxation and hypnotherapy session.
He asked the players to relax, control their breathing and then visualise the match ahead. Gould remembers Roger asking them to imagine themselves playing the perfect game — making tackles, kicking well, scoring tries and seeing everything they did producing a positive result.
Gould, reflecting on this in 43 yers later, could see parallels with techniques that had become commonplace in professional sport.
At the time, however, this was something very different.
As the players lay quietly imagining their perfect performances, one of Penrith’s front-rowers1 suddenly cried out:
“Oh No!”
Everyone sat up.
As Gould remembered it, that rather killed the mood.
Then they beat Easts.
Whatever contribution Roger’s experiment made, something went right that afternoon.
Penrith beat Eastern Suburbs 15–13.
Inevitably, Gould recalled, everyone credited the victory to Roger having hypnotised the team.
So they did it again.
Before the following match against St George at Kogarah on Saturday, 13 May, Roger arranged another session. This time, however, there was a practical problem.
At the Sports Ground the previous week, the hotel had been only a short walk away. Roger didn’t know the St George area nearly as well. The venue he found was down towards Blakehurst — much further from the ground than he had appreciated.
The players walked there, went through another session and then had to walk all the way back to Kogarah. They arrived late, rushed their preparation and St George beat them 26–9.
Gould’s conclusion was succinct:
That was the end of the hypnotherapy.
HEAR PHIL GOULD TELL THE STORY
In this 12-minute extract from Six Tackles with Gus (September 2012), Phil Gould recalls Roger Cowan’s experiments with hypnotherapy and visualisation at Penrith in 1978 — and explains the lasting influence the experience had on his own interest in sports psychology.
Excerpt from Six Tackles with Gus courtesy of Nine Network Australia
It would be easy to leave the story there — an entertaining glimpse of a very different era of rugby league.
But Gould didn’t.
Something Stayed With Gus.
Despite the scepticism of some of the players, and despite the somewhat chaotic end to Roger’s experiment, Gould says he personally got something from it.
More importantly, he says:
“It piqued my interest in sports psychology.”
That interest stayed with him.
When Gould eventually moved into coaching, he became, in his words, “a very strong believer” in the psychological side of preparation and incorporated it into his coaching programs. He sought out sports psychologists, learned from them, and developed ways of helping players understand their own thought processes, motivation, preparation and performance.
Gould’s approach was not about a few minutes of emotional motivation before a match. His 2021 explanation is much broader: self-appraisal, goal setting, preparation, communication, trust, relationships between players and understanding how an individual’s role affects those around him.
And he traced the beginning of his interest back to those early experiences at Penrith.
“That Sort of Stuff Was Unheard of Back Then”
There is an interesting echo to Gould’s recollection.
Many years later, Ivan Cleary encountered Gould as a young player at the Sydney Roosters.
In his book Not Everything Counts … But Everything Matters, Cleary recall being struck by the way Gould thought about football:
From the very start, I was blown away by the way Gus saw the game.
Cleary remembers Gould’s tactics and strategy, but specifically mentions “the mental side of the footy”.
On one occasion Gould brought a psychologist in to speak to the players.
Cleary’s recollection is telling:
That sort of stuff was unheard of back then.
Perhaps it was to Cleary.
But it wasn’t to Gould.
Nearly two decades earlier, a teenage Phil Gould had been lying on the floor of a closed Sydney hotel while Roger Cowan asked him to relax, control his breathing and visualise himself playing the perfect game.
More Than an Eccentric Experiment
In Part 43 of Panthers, Passion & Politics, Roger talks about his longstanding fascination with what he called “the power of the unconscious to affect performance”.
He explored meditation, hypnosis, NLP and other approaches to changing patterns of thought. At various times he worked directly with Panthers players who were struggling with confidence or performance.
Read in isolation, Roger’s recollections might sound like the unusual interests of an unconventional chief executive.
Gould’s story adds something important.
It independently confirms that Roger was actually experimenting with these ideas in the Panthers football environment as early as 1978.
Care needs to be taken about claiming any more than that. There may have been others in rugby league experimenting with psychological preparation at the time, and there is no need to claim that Roger Cowan invented or pioneered sports psychology in the game.
But it is interesting enough that Roger was exploring the mental dimensions of sporting performance at a time when such ideas were far from commonplace in rugby league.
Intersting enough because he had plenty on his plate with the entire Panthers enterprise. Interesting enough given the label “anti-rugby-league” tat had been applied by some.
The first experiment produced a memorable win.
The second produced a long walk and a 26–9 defeat.
And the hypnotherapy sessions stopped for then.
But for one 19-year-old player, something remained.
More than forty years later, Phil Gould could still trace his interest in sports psychology back to those unusual afternoons at Penrith — an interest he would eventually carry into his own highly successful coaching career.
Perhaps Roger’s experiment achieved something after all.
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Unfortunately Gould does not name the player. The front-rowers on the day were John Farragher and Ross Cale. In the second row were Paul Merlo and Tas Batieri. ↩︎
For Roger Cowan, a problem was rarely just the incident that brought it to attention.
His instinct was to pull it apart. What was actually going wrong? Who was affected? What outcome was required? And, most importantly, could a system be designed that would produce that outcome more consistently?
It was an approach to problem-solving and decision-making he was embedding across the Panthers organisation throughout the 1990s — and one he believed was important to its continuing success.
Few examples illustrate that approach better than his work on rugby league’s judiciary.
The problem had bothered him for decades.
“Sit down, Mr Cowan”
As Roger recalled in Panthers, Passion & Politics, when he served on the NSW Rugby League executive committee in the early 1970s, judiciary decisions regularly created controversy. Penalties appeared inconsistent and clubs sometimes believed others were receiving more favourable treatment.
Eventually he tried to raise the issue at an executive meeting.
“I want to make a suggestion about the judiciary system,” he told chairman Bill Buckley.
“Sit down, Mr Cowan, you’re not here to talk about judiciary.”
Roger tried again.
“Sit down Mr Cowan or leave the meeting. You are out of order.”
That was the end of the discussion.
More than twenty years later, rugby league had changed dramatically — and was in the process of changing even more.
During the planning for Super League, the judiciary came up for discussion. Roger said he had “always had a passion for judiciary” and offered to prepare a paper.
This time the response was different.
“Terrific! Go ahead, do it.”
So he did.
Start with the outcome
The surviving working paper is dated 24 November 1995.
Its opening is revealing.
Roger did not begin by deciding who should sit on the judiciary or what punishment should apply to a high tackle.
He began by identifying what a better judiciary system should achieve. What is the outcome — what evidence will demonstrate the system is a success?
Among a list of outcomes were: reduced levels of public criticism of judiciary decisions; elimination of the perception that penalties were inconsistent or favoured particular clubs; less involvement of solicitors; reduced number of hearings and shorter duration; and elimination of appeals based simply on the severity of a sentence.
Before designing the machinery, he defined what the machinery was supposed to accomplish.
That changed the nature of the problem.
It wasn’t simply a question of whether an individual judiciary panel made the right or wrong decision. A system could produce perfectly defensible individual decisions and still create inconsistency, expense, delay and a perception of unfairness.
Roger’s proposal therefore attempted to move responsibility for consistency away from the discretion of whichever individuals happened to be sitting on a particular night and place much more of it within the system itself.
Separate guilt from penalty
At the centre of the proposal was a relatively simple distinction.
The judiciary should determine whether a player was guilty and, if so, what offence had been committed.
Ordinarily, it should not then decide the penalty from scratch.
Offences would instead be divided into clearly defined categories carrying predetermined penalties. Discounts and additional penalties could be applied according to defined circumstances.
A player whose guilt was clear could plead guilty, receive the appropriate discount and avoid a hearing altogether. A player maintaining innocence retained the right to have the case heard.
By January 1996, when Roger presented the proposal to Super League, the concept had been distilled into five principal elements:
experts should be used where necessary;
a Head of Judiciary should control the process;
there should be incentives for guilty pleas;
penalties should be predetermined, with the judiciary principally deciding guilt rather than sentence; and
hearings should generally occur only where a player pleaded not guilty.
The objective was not simply tougher or softer penalties.
It was greater consistency.
Design the process, not just the idea
Roger’s November paper went well beyond the broad concept.
It worked through what should happen from the time an incident occurred.
The Head of Judiciary would identify an appropriate charge and notify the player. Where necessary, expert analysis could be obtained. If that evidence exonerated the player, the matter ended. If it supported the charge, the player had another opportunity to plead guilty. If the player continued to maintain innocence, a judiciary hearing followed.
The proposal dealt with who should pay for expert evidence. It considered appeals and appeal fees. It provided for records of previous offences, discounts for guilty pleas and additional penalties in defined circumstances.
Roger even tried to anticipate the objections to what he was proposing.
One obvious objection to predetermined penalties was that no two incidents were exactly alike.
Surely a judiciary panel needed discretion to recognise the difference?
Roger’s answer wasn’t to ignore those differences and he produced the principle that offences a more precisely defined and graded.
A high tackle, for example, might be divided into 20 or more categories, each carrying its own penalty.
He also recognised the potential danger in relying upon expert analysis. If a new system placed greater weight on expert evidence and that evidence was subsequently shown to be wrong, confidence in the entire system could be damaged.
One proposed safeguard was a second expert opinion in controversial cases.
Even the media were considered part of the process.
Journalists and editors should have access to the schedules of offences, penalties, discounts and additions. Expert reports should be available and journalists invited to see the video evidence supporting them.
Public understanding wasn’t something to worry about after a decision had been made.
It was part of the system.
From weeks to points
Perhaps one of the most interesting ideas appears under the rather modest heading “Future Considerations.”
Roger had identified another problem.
If suspensions were expressed only in whole weeks, a carefully graded series of offences could still end up producing the same penalty. Several different levels of seriousness might all result in a one-week suspension.
So he considered a points system.
One hundred points could represent a one-week suspension. A penalty of 275 points could produce an immediate two-week suspension, with 75 points carried forward. Discounts and additions could also be expressed as points.
It allowed much finer distinctions between offences and circumstances.
The significance for this story is not simply the points themselves.
The working paper captures Roger’s thought process while it was happening:
If we solve this problem, what new problem might our solution create? And how might we solve that?
Not entirely Roger’s system
The proposal did not simply emerge from Roger’s office and become the Super League judiciary unchanged.
Roger himself was quite clear about that.
Many people became involved in developing the final system and compromises were made. His original submission was not adopted in its entirety, although he believed most of its principles survived.
That distinction becomes particularly important when the story reaches 1998.
By then Super League and the Australian Rugby League had come together in the new National Rugby League, and a decision had to be made about which judiciary system the unified competition would use.
The two systems were fundamentally different.
Roger attended meetings between representatives of the ARL and Super League attempting to reach agreement. According to his later account, those meetings achieved little and the question was eventually referred to the chief executives of the 20 clubs.
They heard submissions supporting both alternatives.
The result, Roger recorded, was 18 votes to two in favour of the Super League system — including support from 10 of the 12 former ARL clubs.
It appeared that the argument had been won.
Roger soon became convinced that something very different had happened.
The system meets the real world
By June 1998, the new NRL judiciary was attracting considerable public criticism.
This was the first season of the unified competition and the clubs had overwhelmingly chosen the Super League judiciary model. Yet some early decisions were already raising questions about whether the system being implemented was actually operating according to the principles the clubs had endorsed.
Two cases involving prominent players became particularly contentious.
Glenn Lazarus, playing for the Melbourne Storm on the eve of a State of Origin match, had received 130 points for a high tackle. With 100 points producing an automatic one-match suspension, the penalty would have ruled him out of State of Origin. The penalty was reduced to 99 points — allowing Lazarus to play Origin, leaving the 99 points to be carried forward.
Geoff Toovey’s circumstances were different. Due to his past judicial recorded any offences attracted a loading on a standard penalty. He — again enough for an automatic one-match suspension. Toovey’s points were reduced back to 75 Concerned that suspending a prominent and respected captain for such a minor offence would appear unreasonable, the authorities reduced his points to 75.2
Whatever the merits of either decision, both exposed a problem at the heart of a system intended to produce consistency.
If Lazarus’s circumstances justified reducing 130 points to 99, what would happen when the next player accumulated 130 points but did not have a State of Origin match approaching?
If Toovey’s standing in the game, or the relatively minor nature of the offence that triggered his suspension, justified reducing his accumulated points, would the same consideration be available to a less prominent player?
These were among the controversies being discussed publicly by radio broadcaster Ray Hadley.
Roger had been listening.
On 15 June 1998, he wrote Hadley a five-page letter. He agreed that a number of decisions during the season appeared “absurd from the public’s point of view”.
But Roger believed the controversy was being blamed on the wrong thing.
The problem, as he saw it, was not that the principles developed for the Super League judiciary had failed. It was that the NRL judiciary had departed from what he regarded as the most fundamental of those principles.
The difference came down to a deceptively simple question:
Who was responsible for consistency?
Under the old system, that responsibility rested substantially with the judiciary panel. Change the people and the interpretation — and potentially the outcomes — could change with them.
The Super League philosophy put much greater responsibility upon the administrators of the game.
The judiciary determined guilt. The rules and schedules provided consistency in penalty.
Those rules could be changed.
But when they changed, they changed for everyone.
Learn from the bad decision
This is where the Hadley letter perhaps reveals more about Roger’s thinking than the original proposal.
He did not suggest that his system would prevent every bad or controversial outcome.
Quite the opposite:
“No judiciary system will ever be perfect.”
What mattered was what happened when an imperfection became apparent.
A good system, he wrote, should produce greater consistency and generate its own improvements.
If a particular case exposed an unfair penalty, the administrators could change the schedule.
The next player committing the same or a closely comparable offence would then receive the new penalty.
The lesson from the controversial decision had been captured by the system.
That was fundamentally different from allowing a panel to produce a different result next time simply because its members regarded the circumstances differently.
The first approach changed the rule for everyone.
The second changed the decision for one person.
Lazarus, Toovey — and the next player
Roger’s response to the Lazarus and Toovey controversies was revealing.
He was not necessarily arguing that the concessions made to either player were wrong.
His concern was what happened the next time.
If there was a legitimate reason why Lazarus’s 130-point penalty should be reduced to 99, that reason should be identified and incorporated into the rules. Every future player satisfying the same conditions should then receive the same treatment.
The same principle applied to Toovey. If there was a legitimate reason why his circumstances warranted reducing the points that would otherwise have resulted in suspension, define that circumstance and make the concession available to every player who subsequently qualified for it.
The individual decision therefore became evidence.
If it revealed something wrong with the existing rules, fix the rules.
If it revealed a legitimate circumstance that had not previously been anticipated, incorporate that circumstance into the rules.
Either way, the system became better.
But not a system without judgement
Roger was not arguing for a completely mechanical judiciary.
His letter makes that clear.
Under the Super League system, the judiciary retained discretion to alter a penalty where it considered the circumstances of a particular case genuinely unusual. As far as Roger knew, that discretion had not been used during the Super League season.
The distinction is important.
His objective was not to eliminate judgement.
It was to prevent routine decisions from depending unnecessarily upon individual judgement — while retaining discretion for the genuinely exceptional case.
Consistency was the default.
Departure from it needed a reason.
Who cares what the system is?
Another surviving set of Roger’s notes from 1998 approaches the same issue from a different direction.
At the top of the page he posed a simple question:
Players cared. They wanted less time spent travelling to and attending hearings, equal treatment and a safer game.
Coaches cared. Judiciary appearances interfered with training; they wanted their players treated fairly and protected from dangerous play.
Chief executives cared about the time consumed by judiciary matters and the treatment of their players.
Financial managers cared about the cost of solicitors, witnesses and travel.
Supporters wanted confidence that their team was being treated equally. They also wanted the game’s best players playing rather than injured or suspended.
And the media?
Roger’s assessment was characteristically dry:
“As many opportunities as possible to create controversy.”
There is humour in the line, but the exercise itself is revealing.
Before judging whether a system was working, Roger was asking what the different people affected by it actually required from it.
Don’t fix the decision. Fix the system.
The surviving judiciary papers stretch from the original Super League proposal in November 1995, through its presentation and development in 1996, to Roger’s defence of its underlying principles in 1998.
Together they provide something more interesting than a claim about who devised rugby league’s judiciary.
They provide a small window into how Roger Cowan approached a problem.
Start by defining what you are trying to achieve.
Identify who is affected.
Separate the problem from the personalities involved.
Design a process rather than relying upon good intentions.
Build incentives into that process.
Anticipate objections.
Allow for exceptional circumstances.
And when the system produces an outcome that exposes a weakness, don’t simply correct the outcome.
Learn from it.
Change the system.
Then apply the improvement consistently to everyone who comes next.
It was an approach Roger applied repeatedly during his years at Panthers — to organisational structures, financial controls, strategic planning and football administration.
The judiciary happens to leave behind an unusually clear documentary trail showing that approach at work.
There is also a certain symmetry to the story.
In the early 1970s, Roger tried to suggest there might be a better way to administer rugby league’s judiciary.
He was told to sit down.
More than twenty years later, he was finally invited to develop the idea.
And when the new National Rugby League had to choose between two fundamentally different approaches, 18 of its 20 clubs voted for the system that had grown from that proposal.
For Roger, however, winning that argument was never quite the point.
The system still had to work.
And if it didn’t, the answer was not to abandon the principles behind it.
It was to find out why — and make the system better.
From the Panthers Passion Politics Digital Archives
The surviving documents behind this story provide an unusual opportunity to follow the development of Roger Cowan’s thinking about the rugby league judiciary — from his original proposal, through its presentation to Super League, to his response when he believed the principles behind the system were being compromised.
November 1995 — The Original Judiciary Proposal
Roger Cowan, 24 November 1995
Roger’s original working paper setting out the objectives of a proposed Super League judiciary system, its procedures and safeguards, and the problems it was intended to overcome. The document also includes his early consideration of replacing suspensions expressed solely in weeks with a points-based system.
The presentation prepared from the earlier working paper, distilling the proposal into its principal elements for consideration by Super League. It shows how the more detailed November proposal was developed into a practical model for discussion and implementation.
These working notes approach the judiciary from another direction: who is affected by the system, and what does each group need from it? Roger considers the interests of players, coaches, chief executives, financial managers, supporters, administrators and the media.
Written during controversy surrounding the judiciary in the first NRL season, this five-page letter explains Roger’s concern that the system being implemented had departed from a fundamental principle of the Super League model: consistency should reside principally in the rules and procedures rather than depend upon individual decisions. The letter discusses the Glenn Lazarus and Geoff Toovey cases and explains how Roger believed apparent anomalies should be used to improve the system.
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This was another technique Roger encouraged in the decision-making process throughout Panthers — this took various forms and names depending on the specific circumstance. One was use deBono’s “Six Hat Thinking” where the Black Hat was engaged to argue against the idea. Using the process developed by Mike Basch of Federal Express, there was a section title “Things We Must Overcome” where the challenges were listed and anything that “killed” the diea identified. ↩︎
In Round 1 of the 1998 unified season Brisbane played Manly in Brisbane. Bill Harrigan was the referee. Early in the match Harrigan sent Toovey to the sin-bin for dissent about a decision. In the last 30 seconds of the game John Hopoate was sent of for referee abuse. Wtin seconds Toovey was also sent and the charge was also abuse. ↩︎
Throughout Panthers, Passion & Politics, five Panthers directors — John Bateman, Greg Evans, Craig Terry, Geoff James and Denis Coffey — are frequently referred to as the Footy Five.
It is a useful description — maybe too useful.
The five directors became linked during a period of increasing disagreement within the Panthers Board. The first public indication of a division came with Ron Mulock’s press release of 6 September 1999.1Even then, however, neither the directors involved nor any particular grouping of them was publicly identified.
The name Footy Five would not be applied until more than two years later.
The position was more complicated.
The stand-alone issue placed these five directors on the same side of an important disagreement. All directors wanted Panthers to remain independently represented in the highest level of rugby league.
The different “sides” developed well after the 1998 Information Night.2 The division was about whether Panthers should continue investigating possible amalgamation arrangements as protection against the possibility that remaining independent might ultimately prove impossible.
But the five agreeing on that issue did not mean agreement on everything else, nor necessarily the existence of the later faction.
As John Bateman recalled in his January 2007 correspondence with Jennie Bentley:
Any real unison between ourselves [the group eventually labelled “Footy Five”] emerged much later during the period March-September 2002 when the Board was facing major problems associated with licenced club amalgamations.
By then, the differences within the Board had become much more visible.3
And the name that emerged was extraordinarily effective.
More Than a Name
At its simplest, Footy Five identified five directors and reflected their particular concern for the interests of the football club.
Political labels are rarely quite that simple.
To start, calling one group the Footy Five inevitably also labelled the other four directors. If these five directors represented football, where did that leave the other directors?
It helped reduce complicated disagreements over governance and the future direction of Panthers to a simple binary proposition:
one side was for football; the other side was not
That distinction was powerful.
It was also an oversimplification.
Perhaps that should not be surprising. The term was created by Ron Mulock, someone with considerable experience in politics and political campaigning, and it framed the approaching board election with considerable effectiveness.
Yet the issues then dividing the Board were complex. They involved club amalgamations, governance, members’ rights and benefits, commitments made to members of amalgamating clubs and, ultimately, competing views about the direction Panthers was taking.
For some of the Footy Five, however, these issues were connected to football.
Their fear was that the club amalgamations might eventually produce a “reverse takeover” of Panthers. A changed membership and governance structure, they believed, could reopen the possibility of a football merger. Some went further, suspecting that management itself might be orchestrating such an outcome.
Whether those fears were justified belongs to the later story. What matters here is that, by the time the Footy Five name emerged, trust between management and the majority of the Board had substantially eroded.
The disagreements were real. So too were differences in philosophy and priorities.
But the suggestion that one group cared about football while the other did not was precisely the characterisation challenged throughout Jennie Bentley’s original manuscript.
All wanted Panthers to survive as a stand-alone club.
One view was that the organisation should concentrate its resources and energy on achieving the stand-alone objective. The other was that prudent management also required investigation and preparation of alternatives that everyone hoped would never be needed.
That is a much more subtle proposition than pro-football versus anti-football.
Looking Back Through a Later Label
There is another consequence of the effectiveness of the Footy Five name.
It stuck!
Once the five directors became identified in that way, the term was a convenient shorthand for describing them — including when looking backwards at events that had occurred before the name existed.
Panthers, Passion & Politics does this too.
The original manuscript regularly refers to the Footy Five while describing earlier events. This can create the impression that the grouping, the name and the political division it came to represent already existed in their later form.
It is an impression needing some qualification.
The five directors were there. They sometimes shared positions on important issues. And their relationships and influence upon one another were developing. Those earlier disagreements became part of the history that eventually produced the later Board division.
But they were not yet publicly — or privately — defined as the Footy Five.
Describing the five directors in an earlier dispute as the Footy Five makes it very tempting to interpret that dispute through the lens of what came later: football against business, football supporters against their opponents, or ultimately the Footy Five against people supposedly less committed to the game.
It is also easy to fall into the trap of believing there was a dispute over standing alone — there was not!
The contemporary story was more complicated.
The Power of Retrospect
This is one of the difficulties of telling history.
Later events give names and meanings to things that may have appeared quite differently to those experiencing them at the time.
A memorable label makes a complicated story easier to tell. Eventually it can become so familiar that it seems always to have existed.
And The Footy Five is undoubtedly a memorable label.
Its effectiveness can perhaps be measured by the fact that the terminology was eventually adopted retrospectively in the original account of these events — and subsequently in this project.
For Panthers, Passion & Politics, that requires a small but important editorial correction.
Where the term Footy Five is used in connection with events preceding the later Board conflict and election, it should generally be understood as retrospective shorthand for the five directors who later became known as the Footy Five.
It simply avoids allowing a highly effective later political label to define an earlier debate more neatly than the evidence warrants.
And in a story so often concerned with the power of perception, language and public narrative, that distinction seems particularly worth making.
Roger Cowan believed the faction — later labelled Footy Five — was well defined by late 1999 when they forced Leo Armstrong to relinquish his long-held position as chairman. ↩︎
Solicitor; Penrith City Councillor and Mayor; Panthers Director; Member of the “Footy Five”
John Bateman was a highly prominent public figure in Penrith during the 1990s and early 2000s. A respected solicitor, local government leader and long-serving councillor, he combined legal expertise with extensive community and political experience. His appointment to the Panthers Board reflected both his professional standing and the growing stature of Panthers as one of Western Sydney’s largest and most influential organisations.
Within Panthers, Passion & Politics, Bateman emerges as one of the principal figures in the governance conflicts that reshaped the organisation during the closing years of Roger Cowan’s administration. Initially appointed to strengthen the Board, he later became one of the leading advocates of an alternative direction for Panthers during the Super League era, the merger debates and the internal disputes that followed.
Role in the Narrative
John Bateman’s involvement in the narrative spans much of the conflict that dominates the latter half of Panthers, Passion & Politics.
Appointed to the Panthers Board in the mid-1990s, he entered the organisation at a time when Panthers had grown from a successful licensed club into one of the largest community organisations in New South Wales. Board membership had become both influential and prestigious, attracting individuals whose professional experience and public standing could contribute to the increasingly complex governance of the organisation
Bateman quickly became an influential director. During the Super League conflict and the subsequent National Rugby League rationalisation process, he emerged as one of the strongest advocates for Panthers pursuing a stand-alone future rather than preparing contingency plans involving merger discussions. He became closely associated with the group of directors later known as the “Footy Five.”
As disagreements between management and sections of the Board intensified, Bateman became one of the central figures in debates surrounding merger negotiations, governance, Board authority and the future direction of Panthers — in particular the governance arrangements associated with Panthers’ club amalgamations. He was a prominent witness in the Temby Inquiry and he categorically denies playing any part in its calling. Bateman in one of the most significant individuals in the later chapters of this story.
Background
Profession: Solicitor
John Bateman established a legal practice in Penrith that became one of the region’s best-known firms. Admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, he built a reputation in both legal practice and community leadership, later becoming a founding partner of Bateman Battersby Lawyers.
Community Leadership:
Bateman’s public life extended well beyond the legal profession. He served for many years as a Penrith City Councillor, Deputy Mayor (1997–98) and Mayor of Penrith (1998–2000), leading the city during preparations for and staging of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, when Penrith hosted rowing and canoe/kayak events.
His community involvement also included service with the Nepean Medical Research Foundation, the Penrith Valley Economic Development Corporation, the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, the Penrith Olympic Torch Relay Committee and numerous sporting and community organisations. He also served on the boards of Panthers, Penrith Rugby Club and the Western Sydney Academy of Sport, reflecting his long-standing commitment to the Penrith region.
Honours: • Australian Sports Medal (2000) • Centenary Medal (2001) • Penrith Citizen of the Year (2008) • Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) (2018) • Western Sydney University Community Fellow (2019) • Honoured Citizen of the City of Penrith (2022)
Appointment to the Panthers Board of Directors:
By the mid-1990s Panthers had become the largest licensed club in New South Wales, one of the largest employers in Western Sydney and one of the region’s most influential organisations. An appointment to the Panthers Board had become one of the most prestigious voluntary positions in the Penrith region, reflecting the organisation’s extraordinary growth and influence.
Bateman was appointed to fill a casual vacancy on the Panthers Board rather than being elected by members. Board appointments increasingly reflected the need for professional expertise alongside traditional community representation. His appointment reflected the confidence directors placed in his legal expertise, political experience and public profile. He also had longstanding interests in sport and established relationships with several existing directors.
Bateman therefore arrived at Panthers not as an unknown community volunteer, but as one of the region’s best-known civic and professional leaders. The Board regarded his appointment as strengthening its capacity to deal with the increasingly complex strategic challenges confronting Panthers.
John Bateman was appointed because he was exactly the sort of director Panthers needed — and the appointment was exactly the sort of position Bateman desired.
Relevance to Events Described
John Bateman’s importance to Panthers, Passion & Politics lies not simply in the positions he held, but in the influence he exercised during one of the most turbulent periods in the club’s history.
During the Super League conflict he became a leading advocate for the view that Panthers should focus on remaining an independent club rather than pursue merger negotiations with another organisation. Although management regarded merger discussions as prudent contingency planning in response to an uncertain future, Bateman believed that even a non-binding declaration of intent could ultimately place Panthers on a path towards losing its independence.
His position reflected a fundamentally different assessment of the risks facing the club.
As the governance conflict deepened, Bateman became one of the most influential members of the group that became known as the “Footy Five.” Together they challenged aspects of the existing governance structure and increasingly opposed Roger Cowan’s leadership on several major issues.
Roger Cowan initially regarded Bateman as a valuable addition to the Board. Over time, however, their relationship deteriorated as their views on governance, strategic planning and the future direction of Panthers diverged. In later reflections Cowan came to believe that Bateman’s growing public profile and political ambitions influenced some of his decisions within Panthers. That interpretation forms part of Cowan’s perspective presented throughout this work rather than an established historical fact.
Bateman was also a key player in disputes centred on the governance of clubs amalgamating with Panthers and the subsequent Temby Inquiry making him one of the most consequential participants in the latter stages of the narrative.
Legacy
John Bateman’s contribution to Penrith extends beyond his involvement with Panthers. As a solicitor, councillor and Mayor, he played an important role in the civic development of the city and was widely recognised for his commitment to the local community.
Within Panthers, however, his legacy is inseparable from one of the organisation’s most divisive periods.
Some sections of the Penrith community regarded him as an independent director prepared to challenge existing leadership and defend the club’s independence during an uncertain period for rugby league. Others saw him as one of the principal figures behind governance disputes that consumed the organisation during the closing years of Roger Cowan’s administration.
Whatever view readers ultimately take, John Bateman’s influence on the events described in Panthers, Passion & Politics was substantial. His decisions, alliances and leadership helped shape the governance conflicts that defined a critical chapter in Panthers’ history.
Sources used to prepare this profile: Advocacy Australia Website; Bateman Battersby Website;
By the end of July 1999, many believed the public debate over a possible joint venture between Penrith and Parramatta had finally run its course.
On 31 July, the Panthers Board rejected the National Rugby League’s invitation to lodge a non-binding joint venture submission. Although such a submission would not have committed Panthers to a merger, it would have extended the deadline and preserved Panthers’ access to the substantial financial incentives being offered by the NRL. By declining the invitation, the Board effectively closed that avenue.
This decision did not remove the uncertainty surrounding Panthers’ future. At that stage the club still faced the possibility of exclusion from the reduced national competition. Questions about the club’s long-term future therefore remained unresolved, even though the merger proposal itself appeared to have been settled.
Five weeks later, the issue unexpectedly returned to the public arena.
On 6 September 1999, former Panthers Patron Ron Mulock issued a press release predicting that another attempt would soon be made to pursue a merger with Parramatta. The statement prompted General Manager Roger Cowan to write directly to Panthers sponsors, responding to a number of Mulock’s claims and explaining both the Board’s position and the reasons behind his earlier recommendation that merger options should be investigated.
The exchange did not end there. Ron Mulock subsequently published a full-page paid advertisement in the Western Weekender and later circulated a detailed response to Roger Cowan’s letter. Together, these documents provide a revealing insight into how the debate was conducted during one of the final stages of the merger controversy.
More importantly, they demonstrate that although the Board had made its decision, there remained a significant difference in management philosophy. While the objective of remaining a stand-alone club was widely shared, opinion differed over whether responsible governance required contingency planning for adverse outcomes or an exclusive focus on achieving the preferred result.
The community’s favoured position was well-known but the atmosphere had quieted after the July 31st confirmation.
Rather than allowing the issue to fade from public view, the correspondence starting with the Mulock Press Release of 6th Spetember reignited debate at a time when the club’s future was still uncertain.
The accompanyingDigital Archive — A Campaign of Letters reproduces these documents in chronological order as contemporary source material. They are presented without alteration, allowing readers to examine the original correspondence and advertisements and draw their own conclusions.
Football fans are always looking for defining moments in their team’s history. A new coach arrives. A star player signs. A premiership follows. The story writes itself.
For Penrith, one of those defining moments was the appointment of Phil “Gus” Gould as first-grade coach in late 1989.
The most common version of this story is simple. Ron Willey departs, Gould returns, and within two seasons the Panthers are premiers.
A simple story that rings truth when told — but, really, the story is only partly told. And, so, does not hold the whole truth
The return of Phil Gould to Penrith, as coach, was undoubtedly one of the most significant decisions in the Club’s history. His influence on standards, preparation, selection and tactical innovation would prove decisive. Yet his appointment was not the beginning of Penrith’s rise. Rather, it was the culmination of a long organisational journey that had transformed the club over more than two decades but most dramatically during the seven years preceding his appointment.
Understanding why Gould succeeded at Penrith requires understanding the club he inherited.
Building a club capable of winning
When Roger Cowan became General Manager in 1965, Penrith was little more than an ambitious newcomer attempting to survive in Sydney’s fiercely competitive rugby league landscape.
The years that followed were devoted to building foundations — foundations of financial stability, sound governance, operational capability and an increasingly professional culture.
The club established administrative systems where few had previously existed. It strengthened its financial position, developed licensed club operations, invested in junior rugby league and gradually created an organisation capable of supporting elite football.
Many of these changes attracted little public attention — and some internal pain and conflict — yet each became another piece of the structure upon which future success would rest.
At the same time, a remarkable generation of local footballers was emerging.
From hopefuls to contenders
Tim Sheens deserves enormous credit for changing the direction of Penrith football.
His young side reached the club’s first semi-final in 1985 and, perhaps more importantly, changed what players and supporters believed was possible.
For the first time, Penrith expected to compete rather than merely participate.
When Ron Willey succeeded Sheens in 1987, he inherited a talented but still developing football team. Over the following three seasons he consolidated much of the progress already achieved — he also instilled a harder competitive edge — what many describe as ‘mongrel’ — that had previously been missing.
The Panthers’ consistency ramped up a couple of pegs, reaching the semi-finals again in 1988 before finishing second on the ladder in 1989, only to bow out in “straight sets” — a loss to Balmain (12-24) in Major Preliminary Semi-Final followed by a loss to Canberra (18-27) in the Minor Semi-final. Canberra went on to win the Grand Final over Balmain.
Willey’s contribution is often overshadowed by what followed, but history should remember that he coached Penrith through an important stage of its development. He inherited an emerging football side and left behind a genuine premiership contender.
By the end of 1989, however, there was a sense that the club had reached an important crossroads. Penrith’s next coach would need to be fully devoted to the Panthers and build upon the foundations already laid. In this late 1989 article Roger Cowan tells Roy Masters:
We need a coach who can devote four or five hours a day to our best juniors and then supervise the Panthers’ three grades in the evenings.
Sydney Morning Herald 28 Sep 1989 — click image to enlarge and read
While the club had become more competitive, the question was whether it could become the best.
The right coach at the right time
Phil Gould did not arrive to rescue a struggling football club.
He arrived at a club already pounding on the door. Today, you’ll often hear the expression “premiership window” — well, Gus joined when that window was wide open.
Sydney Morning Herald Headline 14 Oct 1989 — click image to read full article.
His coaching philosophy was uncompromising. Fitness standards rose. Preparation became more meticulous.
Selection became ruthless when necessary. Reputation alone offered no protection. Gould was prepared to make difficult decisions if he believed they improved the team, even when they involved respected senior players.
The controversial decisions surrounding Royce Simmons during both 1990 and 1991 illustrated both the personal cost and Gould’s willingness to place team performance ahead of sentiment. Those decisions were fiercely debated at the time but reflected the standards he expected throughout the organisation. Bound for Glory recounts Gould’s insistence that difficult decisions were necessary if Penrith was to push through that premiership window and transform from contenders to champions.
His greatest contribution may not have been introducing entirely new ideas, but demanding that every aspect of the football operation meet a higher standard.
Royce Simmons, in Hooked on League, describes some of the changes in 1990:
With Phil Gould at the helm … Weight coaches came to the club for the first time, there was a bit more money in the game and you were able to get away from work a little earlier and get fitter. The game was becoming semi-professional. … Phil was much more structured in his approach with not as much emphasis on skills but certainly a lot more education on how to play a more structured game.
Importantly, he inherited players capable of responding to those demands.
Greg Alexander, Royce Simmons, Mark Geyer, John Cartwright, Brad Izzard, Brad Fittler, Colin van der Voort, Col Bentley and others had largely developed together through Penrith’s football system. Gould refined them into a premiership side.
Just as importantly, he inherited a club capable of supporting elite football.
Behind the scenes, Penrith’s administration continued to expand sponsorship, strengthen finances, modernise marketing and deepen its connection with the wider district. As Bound for Glory records, the Club’s transformation extended well beyond the playing field, with new sponsorships, a new black playing strip for 1991, a rapidly growing marketing operation and increasing community engagement all reinforcing the confidence of an organisation entering the 1990s with growing belief.
The football team was improving because the club itself was improving.
More than one architect
It is tempting to view premierships through the lens of individuals.
Roger Cowan, Tim Sheens, Ron Willey, Phil Gould. Greg Alexander, Royce Simmons — each individually occupies an important place in the history of the Penrith Panthers that led to the 1991 Winfield Cup heading west to Penrith.
Yet focusing too heavily on any one figure risks missing the broader story.
Successful organisations rarely emerge because of one appointment or one season. They are built through hundreds of decisions, made by countless people over many years.
Roger Cowan with successive boards and countless staff built the organisation.
Tim Sheens rebuilt belief.
Ron Willey consolidated competitiveness.
Phil Gould delivered the final refinement.
Each stage depended upon the one before it.
The Final Piece
Looking back on those days, Gould’s appointment appears inevitable.
It was anything but.
It is now well-known that Steve Mortimer was a very strong contender for the Panthers role — and had he not been on a world trip at the crucial time discussions were being held, he may have landed the job. Sliding doors.
Had the Board chosen differently at the end of 1989, Penrith may still have remained one of the competition’s strongest clubs. Whether it would have climbed the final step can never be known.
What history can say with confidence is that Gould arrived at precisely the moment when Penrith was ready for him.
The Panthers did not become premiers simply because they appointed Phil Gould.
They became premiers because, after twenty-five years of organisational development, administrative reform, financial strengthening, football rebuilding and cultural change, the club had finally become capable of making the most of a coach of his calibre.
That is the story. It is a more complete story than the “Gould arrives — Panthers become premiers — Gould is the hero” popular narrative.
Phil Gould’s return was not the beginning of Penrith’s rise — it was the moment when years of patient preparation found their final catalyst.
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.
Contemporary newspaper coverage from the Western Weekender, July- September 1998
Editors Note: The articles selected for this Beyond the Book entry are those that best illustrate the major stages in the public debate as it evolved between July and September 1998.
The following newspaper articles are presented in chronological order. Together they allow readers to follow one of the most significant episodes in Panthers’ history as it unfolded during 1998. Rather than viewing events with the benefit of hindsight, they invite readers to experience the uncertainty, competing arguments and rapidly changing public debate that surrounded the proposed merger discussions.
These articles illustrate how the debate gradually expanded — from Board deliberations, to community campaigns, to local government, to the wider media — before eventually reaching the public information meeting that proved to be a turning point in the story
24 July 1998 — Stand Alone
Commentary
This was one of the first major reports after discussion of a possible merger became widely known. The article captures the immediate emotional response within the Penrith community and reflects the strength of the emerging “Stand Alone” campaign.
At the same time, it provides readers with Roger Cowan’s explanation of why management believed every contingency needed to be examined if Panthers was to maximise its chances of remaining in the National Rugby League.
Reading the article today, one feature stands out. The emotional and practical arguments were already beginning to diverge. While much of the public discussion centred on loyalty and identity, management continued to focus on risk, planning and the long-term survival of the club.
Despite Cowan and his management team being as passionate and loyal — as emotionally invested — as the most fervent supporter, these qualities were already being overshadowed by the emerging public narrative.
31 July 1998 — War of Words
Commentary
Within a week the debate had expanded well beyond Penrith itself. Sydney’s leading radio commentator, Ray Hadley, had broadcast damaging misinformation about Panthers prompting the Club to respond with an open letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Western Weekender.
This exchange illustrates how quickly the discussion moved from private Board deliberations to public debate. Importantly, it also demonstrates that Roger Cowan’s explanation of the club’s position was being expressed publicly at the time. The account presented throughout Parts 29–35 is therefore not a reconstruction created years later, but reflects the position being articulated as events unfolded.
Readers may wish to compare this article with the discussion in Part 33 of The Series — A Good Story Trumps Truth — where the relationship between public perception and documented fact is explored in greater detail.
7 August 1998 — Merger Decision Deferred
Commentary
This article is significant because it records Panthers’ management describing its decision-making process while events were still unfolding. It’s headline — Damned if you do … — echoes the difficulties being encountered by those responsible for the Club. Roger Cowan repeatedly emphasises that the Board was analysing the risks, considering several possible scenarios and attempting to avoid making decisions based purely on emotion.
It is also a reminder that the future remained highly uncertain. Today it is easy to assume that Panthers’ eventual survival was inevitable. In August 1998 it was anything but certain — indeed, the uncertainty persisted until North Sydney and Manly announced their merger more than a year after the events chronicled here.
21 August 1998 — Council Enters the Debate
Commentary
By late August the merger debate had expanded well beyond Panthers’ Boardroom. Penrith City Council formally resolved to urge the club to remain a stand-alone participant in the National Rugby League, arguing that the Panthers name had become an important part of the city’s identity and economic development.
The article is of particular significance because it captures the complex position occupied by Deputy Mayor John Bateman, who was both a Panthers director and a councillor. Speaking in his capacity as a councillor, Bateman publicly praised the professionalism of Panthers’ management, confirmed that no merger agreement had been reached and acknowledged that the economic case being examined by management was a strong one. At the same time, he explained why he personally believed the socio-economic arguments for retaining an independent Penrith team were ultimately more compelling.
With hindsight, the article demonstrates that the debate had become far more sophisticated than a simple contest between “for” and “against”. Competing economic, governance and community considerations were all being weighed, even by people who ultimately reached different conclusions.
11 September 1998 — The Passion … The Practical
Commentary
The public information meeting marked an important turning point in the merger debate. As described in Part 34, Roger Cowan later recalled the meeting as having become an “ambush”, while many supporters regarded it as the defining moment in the campaign to remain a stand-alone club.
The reporting that followed is interesting for another reason. Rather than simply recording the arguments presented, the article framed the debate as one of “Passion” versus “Practical”. Ron Mulock’s position appeared under the heading The Passion, while Roger Cowan’s appeared under …the Practical.
Whether intentional or not, this framing invites an interesting question. Was the debate really between passion and practicality, or were both men expressing different forms of commitment to the same objective — the long-term future of Panthers?
Readers who have followed Parts 29–35 may notice a striking irony. Throughout those chapters, management’s practical approach — risk analysis, contingency planning and exploring every available option — was itself driven by a determination to preserve Panthers’ place in the National Rugby League. The practical and the passionate were not necessarily opposing ideas; they were different philosophies for pursuing what each believed was in the club’s best interests.
It is obvious that both sides of this debate were driven by people holding strong loyalty and devotion to the Penrith Panthers.
Looking Back
Reading these articles nearly three decades later, several observations stand out.
The uncertainty of the time is unmistakable. Decisions that now seem obvious were anything but obvious in 1998. Much of the debate took place before supporters had access to the information available today.
The articles also reveal how rapidly public narratives developed. As discussions moved from the Boardroom into newspapers, radio and public meetings, the story acquired a momentum of its own. Perceptions often became as influential as documented facts.
Perhaps most interesting of all is the consistency of Roger Cowan’s public position. Whether speaking through interviews, open letters or Board statements, the central themes remained remarkably consistent: the risks were real, the future uncertain, and management had a responsibility to examine every realistic option before events overtook the club.
These articles go beyond being simple contemporary newspaper clippings. They are historical documents that allow readers to experience events as they unfolded, before hindsight shaped later interpretations.
Readers wishing to explore these articles in full can download the accompanying PDF containing the complete Western Weekender collection reproduced in this Beyond the Book entry.
Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 