Category: Removed Sections

Not Your Everyday Amalgamation — Shenanigans in Port

A removed section from the original Chapter 13: Amalgamations Not Takeovers. It tells the remarkable story of the contest over the future of Port Macquarie RSL Club — a dispute involving competing amalgamation proposals, an intense local campaign, political intervention and even a bomb hoax. It has been removed from the main narrative because the level of detail interrupts the broader account of Panthers’ amalgamation strategy, but the episode provides important context for both the Port Macquarie amalgamation and the political reaction to Panthers’ expansion.

The Port Macquarie Panthers story reads like the script for a Bruce Willis movie. It had secret meetings and bomb threats, vandalism, office bugging, threatening phone calls, 19 faceless men, and, of course, who let the dog out?

But the most important element of all was people power.

In mid-2000, the Board and management of the Port Macquarie RSL agreed to approach Panthers about an amalgamation. The club was in trouble and had been for many years.

The original RSL club was born in 1947 in a corrugated Nissen hut, in the centre of what was then a small beachside town. The local sub-branch owned the site and leased it to the licensed club.

After a failed attempt to buy the property from the sub-branch in 1986, the club bought the land in Bay Street where its new premises would be built. It was a short distance from the centre of town, in what was to become a prime waterfront location.

The club moved into its new premises in August 1993, but due to the recession and a blow-out in the building costs, it started with a $22 million debt. Within a few months, it became clear that the new location had not attracted local members in the numbers anticipated. The locals were staying away in droves.

By early 1994, management knew they were in trouble. The club went into voluntary administration in May of that year and continued to operate that way until Panthers came on the scene.

An agreement was struck very quickly between Panthers and the club’s chief executive, Greg Willcocks, and board chairman Graham Linn. Board and management of both clubs negotiated a memorandum of understanding. Roger Cowan and Glenn Matthews attended a meeting of around 800 members on 26 November 2000. Linn told members that the amalgamation offered members ‘a brighter and more certain option for the future’.

Contemporary reports and parliamentary records relating to the Port Macquarie amalgamation are available in the PPP Digital Archive: The Port Macquarie Amalgamation — A Contemporary Record: “Shenanigans” at Port .

Roger Cowan also spoke, assuring members that the Panthers model would preserve the club’s local identity, retain local management and that staff would have all their benefits honoured.

He told the meeting that Panthers had been able to negotiate with the bank to bring the club’s debt of $44 million dollars down to around $8.8 million. The members voted almost unanimously to proceed with the amalgamation.

Cowan explains,

The club had been in trouble for a long time, and the debt was growing. A lot of the accumulated debt was unpaid interest. The bank had not been able to bring about any improvements in the club’s trading position and wanted to write it off their books. At that point, they knew that there was no chance that they would ever collect the total debt, so it was just a matter of how far they would come down. We worked out a figure that we thought was manageable and negotiated from that angle.

For Panthers, the next phase began. An application to the licensing court was approved, and it appeared that everything was on track for a smooth transition.

Around the middle of 2001, Cowan received word that the club was looking at an alternative proposition. In the next couple of months, details of the new offer were revealed.  A group of 19 local businessmen had put a proposition to the club.

Freely admitting that they were taking advantage of the new, lower debt that had been negotiated by Panthers, they said they had raised $2 million and had finance for the remainder. Their plan was to pay out the debt and take over the ownership of the prime Bay Street site. The club would retain ownership of its bowling club at Hibbard.

The relationship between Panthers and Graham Linn, and to a lesser extent with Willcocks, began to come apart. Unwilling to become embroiled in a local conflict, Panthers decided to back off. To them it seemed that the Port Macquarie club was committing itself to a deal that was almost suicidal, but they could also see there was no point in persisting where they were not wanted.

The nineteen investors were looking at a windfall. They would be buying a prime property for less than $9 million and renting it back to the club.  After ten years, or if the club defaulted, they would have the right to sell or redevelop it. Property values in Port Macquarie were increasing, particularly on such a prime waterfront site, adjacent to the only major shopping centre in town. By 2004, the value of Port Panthers site was already close to 25 million. It had increased even more when development opportunities were explored in 2006.

It was a wonderful deal for the investors, but for the club it was a different prospect.

At the end of the ten years it would need to find a new site, in a suitable position, reasonably close to town, in a property market that was going through the roof. If profits were consistently high over the ten years, it may have accumulated the funds to buy the club back or to secure another site and rebuild. If it didn’t, its only alternative would be to relocate to the Hibbard club a few kilometres out of town and build a new club there. It would take an extremely optimistic view to believe that the club could accumulate, in ten years of trading, sufficient capital to start again in a reasonable way. Taking into account its trading history, and that the investors could do nothing to help in that regard, it was more than optimistic.

The biggest complaint from the locals was the fact that these 19 men, throughout the entire process, refused to reveal their identities. The secrecy, the future security of the club, and the enormous profit potential soon had members thinking and talking.

The ‘19 faceless men’ saga became the biggest story in town. Nine months earlier, there had been an overwhelming vote to go with Panthers, but now there were many who now saying that ‘local ownership’ was a better option than letting the big out-of-town super-club come in to take over the world. Today the club is probably much more a locally-owned club than it would have been had it taken the offer to sell the premises.

The club’s chairman and others were now enthusiastically backing the alternative bid. One of the points they would continue to push during the campaign was that the non-Panthers bid would see the club become ‘debt free’. What they failed to mention, however, was that it would also be free of its greatest asset. Instead of paying interest on its loans, it would be paying rent.

One group of members was particularly concerned about the disappearance of Panthers from the negotiating table. These ten ‘concerned club members’ formed their own little consortium. One of them, Col Munro, made a personal phone call to Roger Cowan. He asked, ‘you’re not dumping us, are you?’

I explained to Col that Panthers was not interested in pushing in where it was not wanted. This was a local issue and the members had to sort it out for themselves. He told me that we had been given the wrong impression. A large majority of members still wanted the Panthers amalgamation and the perception in town was that Panthers was letting them down. I finally agreed to meet his group to see if we should become involved again.

The following morning, a breakfast meeting was held in a Port Macquarie coffee shop. It was attended by Roger Cowan, Barry Walsh, and the ten concerned members. Munro was later elected to Port Macquarie Panthers’ advisory board. Another member of the group was David Meidling, also on the advisory board. David also was elected to Panthers’ group board.

Panthers agreed it would honour its original commitment provided there was sufficient support by the members.

The group mounted a campaign, bombarding the local Port News newspaper with letters to the editor. They also got out amongst the townspeople, talking, rallying members and getting signatures on petitions. This tactic would continue over the next three months, and in the end, was the thing that tipped the balance.

A meeting of members was scheduled for 11 October. Both sides would put their case. A local businessman would speak for the 19. It was here that the high farce began. Greg Wilcocks introduced the parties, and Roger Cowan addressed the large crowd for about 30 minutes. A speaker from the other side had just begun to speak when word came through that there was a bomb in the club.

‘Nobody moved for a while, the reaction was quite hostile,’ says Meidling. ‘There were boos and catcalls and the situation became quite ugly. Nobody at the meeting believed there was a bomb, and most refused to leave.’

The police were called and the meeting broke up, but the high farce continued.

Both sides accused each other of staging the hoax, but it did not stop there. Even the Sydney media got involved. In typical tabloid style, a Daily Telegraph story told of ransacked offices, glue in the locks of someone’s car and house, and anonymous phone threats being made to people on both sides. In a particularly bizarre turn, the story said that a gate had been deliberately opened, ‘allowing the general manager’s beagle to wander off’.

Col Munro shrugs that allegation off. ‘That dog had roamed the North Shore all its life’, says Munro. ‘It didn’t know what a fence was.’

‘We also got accused of bugging the boardroom’, says Munro, ‘though I don’t know how we got past security to do it. We used to meet in a little coffee shop near my place.’

Secret meetings became a way of life, for both sides.

Port News editor Janine Graham says the paranoia in people made the bomb threat seem real. ‘That was what pushed it into wierdsville’, she says.

The bomb did turn out to be a hoax, but it was totally unrelated to amalgamations, faceless men, or either club. A local woman had a little too much to drink and made the call. She received a fine and a suspended sentence.

The meeting galvanised the town. It split down the middle, with a massive media campaign. Full page ads ran in the Port News, and the Holiday Coast Pictorial. The latter publication began full-scale attacks on Panthers and the pro-amalgamation group of members. An ad run by a local businessman called the Panthers’ interest a ‘hostile takeover’. The ad stated that Panthers had never clarified the deal and warned that jobs would be in jeopardy.

He had either not been informed that a detailed memorandum of understanding had been signed by both parties, or he chose to ignore it.

The Hastings Council also got into the act, vocally supporting the local bid. One councillor dismissed concerns about the 19 men. ‘It’s not an issue knowing who is in the consortium,’ he said.

Another full-page ad featured local businesspeople and two local politicians, Rob Oakeshott and John Tingle. Tingle called the consortium ‘white knights’ and said their anonymity should not be seen as anything sinister, and spoke of Panthers’ ‘aggressive takeover program’. Richard Face, became involved and asked the DGR look into the situation.

It could all have been clarified with just one phone call: a copy of the memorandum of understanding would have been available to anyone who asked for it within hours. There was nothing secret about it.

The story moved into the annals of NSW parliamentary history. In state parliament, in answer to a Tingle question, minister for gaming and racing, Richard Face said the happenings in Port Macquarie in October 2001 have ‘strengthened my resolve to reform laws relating to club amalgamations’.

Hansard [27.10.2001] records the minister saying,

The new legislation will require that two clubs that are proposing to amalgamate will have to enter into a deed of amalgamation, clearly setting out key information about the amalgamation. One of the key areas … covered in the deed will be a statement as to what degree the management and staff of the dissolving club are to be retained by the continuing club. The deed will also be required to outline how the local identity of the club is maintained by the continuing club after the amalgamation.

Ironically, each of the legislated gaming reform measures were already part of Panthers’ amalgamation model. They had been resolved and approved by the Club’s management and board in 1999, far in advance of the minister’s announcement of the reform package in July 2001. 

The minister could have discovered, in less than an hour, that Panthers was actually doing more to protect the interests of the amalgamating clubs than anything he was proposing.

The Port Macquarie issue was finally resolved by a postal vote. Around 15,000 ballot papers were sent to members. Col Munro said a disused police cell was hired to keep the votes secure until they were counted. Counting took place at the police station, each side had scrutineers, and a policeman wandered around keeping an eye on things. Of the 6399 members who responded, 4459 voted to amalgamate with Panthers.

Panthers Port Macquarie

This was the only time that Panthers continued with an amalgamation that was supported by less than 90% of the members of the amalgamating club. This was only a 70% majority. It was the policy of Panthers’ management team to steer clear of local conflicts. If the members wanted to join up with Panthers it would go ahead. In the case of Port Macquarie, the genuine interest and sincerity of people like Col Munro, David Meidling and others was a convincing influence to bend the policy.

Janine Graham says that ultimately it was people power that made the decision.

There was a great deal of ‘spin’ on both sides, but in the end Panthers probably did their job a little better. I would really like to know how they managed to find those agents in Port to wage that campaign for them. It was grapevine and word-of-mouth that made it all happen.

Cowan says it seems that few people in Port Macquarie are aware that it was the ‘agents’ who found Panthers, rather than the other way round. And it was these agents who waged the war and saved the club from a deal that put it at grave risk of having no club at all in ten years.

The 19 faceless men probably agreed to invest $100,000 each. The lower debt negotiated by Panthers meant that the remaining $6.5 million would have been easily borrowed on the security of the valuable real estate they were buying. Recent valuations indicate that each individual investment of $100,000 would already [in 2007] be worth more than $1 million. No wonder they fought so hard to discredit Panthers.

But the politicians had no excuse. They had a responsibility to get to the truth before taking sides – and all it needed was a phone call.

From the Panthers Passion Politics Digital Archive

The Port Macquarie Amalgamation — A Contemporary Record: “Shenanigans” at Port
Follow the controversy through contemporary Port Macquarie News reports and NSW Parliamentary records, from the original support for amalgamation in 2000 through the competing proposals, political intervention and eventual conditional approval in December 2001.

View the Digital Archive →

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Politics, Business and Two Different Visions of Panthers

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 book Whatever it Takes, quotes the 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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  1. 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.
    ↩︎
  2. 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. ↩︎

Political Ambition

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.

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Education by Experience

A removed section from the original Chapter 9: An Urgent Need for Research and Change.

IN THE COURSE of more than a year and a half of research and writing for this book, I conducted a large number of interviews. For obvious reasons, more than one of those was with Roger Cowan. Many of our discussions focused on the way things were done at Panthers.

On one occasion, I asked a very specific question. How did that little club evolve into the half billion dollar enterprise that is Panthers today? What made the difference, what did he see as the most important parts of the management philosophy during his 40 years at the helm?

It was an important question, and he wanted plenty of time to consider. Eventually, we decided that it would work better if Roger answered it in his own words.

It is difficult to answer this question because 40 years is such a long time. Many changes have occurred along the way — in knowledge, attitudes, technology, even the way the industry is regulated. In the earlier days  I used a calculator for payroll.

To multiply by seven, for example, we turned a handle seven times. Accounting and stock control were all done manually. The management tools available today demand a much different approach to the use of management time and the expectations of administrative productivity. In many ways, management change has been driven by the changing environment.

The other difficulty I have in answering the question is that I was always inclined to try something new if it looked good. Some things were effective for a while, and made a significant difference at the time, but failed to see the long distance. Some became permanent influences and some failed completely. Some seem too small to mention, yet they held a lot of significance for me.

Applying a very strong filter, I came up with what I considered to be the three most important influences. I am sure it would be an interest­ing debate if members of our management teams were asked the same question. But there is a common thread that runs through the three I have chosen. Each one has quite a lot to do with the need to manage evolu­tionary change rather than merely cope with it. We tend to cope with the results of evolution in our private lives, but business requires a different level of thinking.

Thinking in Outcomes. The success of the human race has depended on the ability to take in information and make rapid decisions. Imagine if our hunter and gatherer forefathers had held meetings to evaluate the knowledge they had gleaned from their observations and then debated what action should be taken. They would have died of starvation or been eaten, and we would not be here to write about it. The natural decision making process for humans is still the same. Our senses collect informa­tion, feed it into our brains in an amazingly short time, and this central processor quickly decides on the options and tells us what to do. Just as well we have that power. You see a car hurtling towards you, out of control, and there is no time to hold a brain storming session to work out how to survive.

Quick thinking is important to us as individuals. My theory, though, is that when it becomes the predominant thinking style used in business, it is often inappropriate and can be downright dangerous. Looking back, I think I harped and nagged about this principle more than anything else in management meetings and training sessions. I was never better than partially successful. It is actually quite difficult to break out of the natural thinking style. It requires discipline and technique. And as soon as you relax the discipline, the natural way of thinking takes over again.

The difference between quick thinking and thinking in outcomes is demonstrated in the following example. The Security Manager puts a proposal to a meeting: there has been an increase in behaviour problems in the club, and the security staff should be increased to deal with the situation. Others in the meeting, respecting the expertise of the Security Manager and seeing the logic of his suggestion, support the proposal. The Finance Manager agrees that the extra cost is affordable. A quick vote and it is all done.

But someone skilled in Outcome Thinking says, “Hold up there. Let’s first agree on what we are trying to achieve. Is it just to cope with increased behaviour problems, or is there more to it?”

The best way to answer that question is by imagining another meeting, some point in the future -say three months ahead. You sit in that meeting, and ask, “What evidence can we find today that proves we made a great decision three months ago? Not just a good decision, but a great one?”

One person might say there are more people visiting the club now than there were three months ago. That proves it was a good decision. Another might suggest that the cost of security has decreased. Others might add that there are fewer incidents of bad behaviour now, the people causing the problems three months ago have gone, there have been no negative stories in the newspapers, and so on.

The challenge is now much different. It is no longer about coping with increased behaviour problems by increasing costs. A great decision would achieve fewer problems, less cost and increased patronage.

The most important debate is about what outcomes the group is willing to support, and what it believes it can achieve. They will usually be much more challenging than expected. When there is an agreed set of outcomes, the next challenge is to find every possible idea for achieving them. That then brings out the creativity in management and usually achieves a better result.

The number -and quality-of ideas might be surprising. In this case it might mean changing the entertainment mix, increasing public relations, zero tolerance in some issues, a different marketing approach, or any number of bright ideas that would never be raised in the quick decision scenario.

The point is that the natural process of quick decision making is the killer of creativity, and often provides solutions to the wrong problems.

Thinking in outcomes ensures that the best goals are set and that they will be creatively pursued. It also encourages creative opposition, and avoids the dangers of ‘groupthink’, where people tend to go along with each other because of respect for expertise or position.

In this situation, you are able to manage the thinking processes, rather than going along with nature.

Values, Beliefs and Culture. Our deep-seated beliefs and values are mostly developed in the very early years. Culture develops from experi­ences, and dictates how people treat each other and expect to be treated. The behaviour in an organisation is a reflection of its culture. The combined beliefs and values of the staff, managers, board, and custom­ers form a rich cultural soup that has to meet the needs of everybody. We see examples every day, and in every part of the world, of the enormous problems caused by clashes of culture, most of which can be traced back to differences in beliefs and values.

Beliefs and values are not impossible to manage. We cannot ask people to change what they believe or how they feel, but we can structure an organisation around the differences. Being aware of the differences allows us to manage them, and achieve a positive culture without the clashes.

Recognition and understanding of values was one of the topics of man­agement training at Panthers. There are many ways of finding out what drives people. When there is better understanding, people work together more harmoniously. There are some good programs and tests available, and most of them are interesting and non-threatening.

One important advantage of setting agreed outcomes is that they define what the group wants to own and achieve in working together. Where there are opposite values, the list will be more limited, but there will still be common purpose.

There is another element in play in the club industry – one that is much less likely to affect other businesses of similar sizes. There is a much stronger board influence on culture, varying significantly from one club to another. Some directors in some clubs enjoy socialising with staff, talking to them during breaks and even – in ways ranging from very subtle to quite demanding – interfering in the way they work. The impact on culture can be profound. Even worse, the influence can be difficult to see until it is entrenched and starts to show up in behaviour.

That is one of the good reasons for clearly separating the responsibili­ties of management from those of directors. A good culture is built on consistency —what is said and done has to be within consistent patterns and plans, and everyone has to be singing the same tune. A good management plan can easily be undermined, quite unknowingly, by directors getting too close to staff and not knowing what the tune is.

The cultures and sub-cultures throughout an organisation will affect the behaviour of people, their satisfaction and productivity. One important subculture is the relationship between board and management. It is the one most difficult to manage. Some of the chapters in this book spell out the type of problems that can arise when it is not well managed.

Panthers workshops involving both management and board always centred on strategic issues. If I had the time over, I would try to interest the directors in joining other workshops that focused on values and culture. In learning to recognise values and understand their impact, everyone could work together to build a shared vision about the cultural objectives of the business. It would not be an easy task, considering that directors often have many other commitments, and the difficulties in getting all the key players together for the time required, but it would be worthwhile.

Evolution and Revolution. Larry Greiner wrote of his theory in 1971, and it was almost 20 years before I discovered it. I wish I had studied it much earlier. It would have helped my understanding of periods of stag­nation and other difficulties.

When a business only has a few employees, the style of management is not as important. The entrepreneurial manager with one assistant and lots of subcontractors can be autocratic and successful. As a business grows and matures, it requires adjustment. Autocracy will not be as effec­tive in a business employing 3,000 people, where the best results come from communication, delegation, participation and good controls. That is not to deny that some successful larger companies are run in a very autocratic fashion. It simply says that Greiner’s research influenced his theory that growth should be handled differently.

There are several stages in the path from small to large, and from young to mature. The needs change through the range of creativity, direction, delegation,  co-ordination and collaboration, each one building on the previous phase. As the business evolves naturally through one stage, pressures start to build almost to bursting point. This causes its own crisis. It is a case of success creating its own problems.

Had I understood the principles much earlier, it would have allowed a smoother transition between the Club’s evolutionary phases. It would probably also have meant a quicker and more effective pathway to what I eventually hoped to achieve — on the democratic ideals of an organisation driven by principles of collaboration. In our case, it was probably more spectacularly noticeable because of the rapid growth of the business over a relatively short period.

Those three principles stand out in my mind because of the impact they had on my thinking. I was influenced about outcomes by reading a great little book on outcomes and performances in my first few years at the Club. I read a lot about culture and did some courses on values and beliefs. In everything you read, you will probably find some gem of wisdom that can improve how you do things. A chance meeting, a brief conversation, a quick word of advice – can plant the tiny seeds that grow into the ideas and concepts that become part of your life.

In my first year at the club I met a director of the City Tattersalls Club in Sydney. One of the things he said that struck a chord in me was that each of us is a totally different person in the eyes of every person who knows us. This had quite an impact on me. It changed not only the way I saw others, but also how I saw myself. We are many, many people living inside the same skin.

In my first year at the Club, I also received some advice from a man named Ken Charlton.

Ken had been a big name in rugby league in the 50s. Around the same time that I started with the Club, he was, if I remember correctly, working as a representative for one of the breweries. He seemed genuinely inter­ested in seeing me make a success of my radical move from teaching to club management. I came to respect him, and when we talked I listened carefully. He told me one day that it is much more effective to ask ques­tions than to make statements. It was simple advice that sounds no more than good common sense. I don’t think that either of us knew just how profound it was at the time. I had an amusing example of its power some years later.

The Club was in the middle of one if its extensions, and I was walking through the work area. We had employed a very clever air conditioning expert, and I wandered up and stood beside him – basically just for a chat. I had no idea at all of what he was doing. I have never been mechanically or technically intelligent. He was explaining some of the work, and I said, purely to show him that I was interested in what he was saying, “Why do we do it like that?”

He stopped for a minute, looked back at the job, and looked at me again. After a pause he said, “You know what? You’re right. That’s not the best way to do it. It would be better if I …

I had asked a dumb question, he mistakenly thought it was an intelligent observation and took it as a challenge to find a better way. Meanwhile, I stood there trying to look as if I really was intelligent. His final disillusionment might come if he reads this book.

But over the years I found that asking questions was important to culture as well as results. Imagine an assistant in the marketing depart­ment prepares a corporate design and presents it to the CEO for approval. The CEO could say, ‘No, I don’t like that. Change the red to purple and make the yellow stronger. Use upper case in the title.’ After the time and effort that has been put into that design, how does the assistant feel about that reaction?

What if the CEO asked questions instead? “Do YOU think the red sends out the message WE want? What if WE tried a bit of purple? How do YOU think that would go?” Plenty of YOU clarifies who still owns the project. Plenty of WE says we are here to work together and help each other.

Questions involving YOU and WE raise the odds in favour of a more motivated assistant, a higher degree of ownership of the design job – and a better design. It is the cultural difference between the organisation being driven autocratically from the top and people collaborating for a better result.

The three main issues I chose are closely linked. They are all about people. Setting outcomes before deciding what to do smooths out values and cultural differences. Some of the essential components of a good, productive culture are well constructed forward plans, logical decisions, and ownership of the plans by all who participated in their making. Outcomes thinking is an important tool.

In some ways the three concepts are a little idealistic. Despite the efforts of a committed management team, we never really reached our own measure of satisfactory. Some sections at Panthers were always closer than others, but we never stopped having to remind people to think in Outcomes. Culture was constantly on the agenda for testing, meas­uring and improvement. And having an organisation fully embrace the Greiner concept of Collaboration is a really challenging dream. Culture and decision-making work in a similar way to systems in a business. Without constant review and discipline, they gradually revert to chaos. What is certain, though, is that we were much closer to those ideals than we would have been had we not been conscious of them, and committed as a team to their pursuit.

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Club Structure · Culture

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The End of Season Drinks That Weren’t So Cordial

A removed section from the original Chapter 8: A Taste of Injustice.

The Penrith-Parramatta game was the last home game of the 1984 season. If the Panthers won, it would mean a semi-finals appearance for the first time in the Club’s history.

By half-time it was becoming obvious that the game was not going well. During the second half, Cowan walked across and sat with the chairman, Leo Armstrong.

Cowan commented to Armstrong that it was pretty obvious this would be the last game of the season. He suggested to Armstrong that the success of the team should be acknowledged in some way. They — the CEO and Chairman — agreed to invite the players and officials back to the boardroom after the game.

Cowan admits he had not thought the invitation through carefully enough. Because it was a spur of the moment decision, only a few directors knew about it. At the time, though, it did not seem important.

At the start of the next board meeting, managers were asked to leave the room.

Don Ellks says,

It was the first time we had ever been asked to leave. Roger sat for some moments as if deciding what to do. He did leave, but reluctantly. After a while Leo came outside and said the board had moved a vote of no confidence in him, and that John Hewett had been re-elected as chairman.

The perceived slight on the directors who missed out on the after-game drinks had provided enough leverage for JohnHewett to make a grab for the chairman position he still resented losing. Cowan was in a tight spot. Conflict on the board had been effecting decision making since 1983, to the detriment of the Club.

This change would affect the morale of the management team. The turnover of the Club was increasing rapidly, scarcely a day seemed to pass without discussion of new initiatives, and it was vital to avoid any instability.

Sensitive negotiations were taking place to refinance the Club’s loans in a deal that would save the club hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reputation and experience of Leo Armstrong as a bank manager was an advantage – there was obvious respect for him by the negotiating bank.

One faction of the board, led by Armstrong, was supportive of management. As well, Armstrong was an excellent chairman, highly respected in the community, by staff and by the members. The other faction seemed to be driven by Hewett. He was seen as the leader of that faction, but Cowan believed he was being pushed by another director, Murray Clarke. Of late, these two had lost the respect of management, staff and quite a lot of members. In this instance they were not acting in the interests of the Club. Any publicity about the chairman’s removal had the potential to do damage.

Worse for Cowan was that Armstrong was about to be humiliated because he agreed with one of Cowan’s suggestions.

When the board called me back into the meeting, I had already decided that the resolution could do a great deal of damage. The negative publicity, the reaction of the members, the negative impact on the finance negotiations and the unfair impact on Armstrong’s reputation should be avoided at all costs. Importantly, the club’s constitution did not clearly give the Board the power to remove the Chairman and it needed a legal opinion. I refused to return to the meeting unless he was reinstated, or it went back to the members.

Cowan reminded the board that it was unconstitutional to continue the meeting without the company secretary. When they called on Don Ellks to come in to act as secretary, Ellks also refused.

During the following week, Hewett went to Cowan’s office to advise that the board had appointed him chairman. Cowan told him that he believed it was improper to move a vote of no confidence and damage Armstrong’s reputation over such a trivial issue. He told Hewett that the management team would continue to recognise Armstrong as the chairman unless there was compliance with the constitution and members of the club endorsed the vote of no confidence. A stalemate had been reached.

Soon after, two of the directors from the Hewett faction would resign, and a tentative peace would return to the board with Armstrong in the chair. Under the surface though, hostility continued to bubble. Hewett would seek revenge — and eventually get it. ‘The conflict between the two factions had been damaging the Club for years‘, says Cowan. ‘Now war had been declared in no uncertain terms.‘

The next election, in 1985, was the board’s first ever departure from its traditional practice of presenting itself as one solid unit for re-election. Neither Hewett nor Hubbard were re-elected to the board.

While Hubbard remains ambivalent about the events of those years, he says that Hewett was devastated. It hit him pretty hard, says Hubbard. ‘His health suffered, and I don’t know that he ever really got over it.’

Related Topics

Related Themes

Board Decisions · Conflict· Football Club

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Rugby League’s Inner Circle

A removed section from the original Chapter 7: The 16 Year Struggle to Streamline Rugby League.

Cowan says that at the time of his campaign for one board, the NSW Rugby League was run by a clique. This was a widely held view within rugby league circles at the time. The General Committee consisted of delegates and vice-presidents from every club – more than 40 delegates attended the monthly meetings. It was extremely unwieldy and inefficient. It is difficult enough for a 15-person board to get to good decisions in reasonable time, says Cowan. He recalls his time on the NSWRL executive in the early seventies.

What’s really funny is that for a while I thought that I was in the clique. We used to meet before every general committee meeting and decide what we were going to support that night. There were about eight of us, and we all thought we were involved in the important decisions.

But I found out later that I was never really “in”. The “in” team was quite small. It was a bit like an archery target – you have the inner and outer circle of the bullseye. So, even though I was on the executive, I was on the outer circle. It took me till 1974 to work it out, and one night I publicly resigned from the executive over a decision they made, but I stayed on the committee as a delegate.

The week after his resignation Cowan crossed paths with Jack Gibson, the coach of Eastern Suburbs, who congratulated Cowan on making a stand. He said a lot of people were sick of the fact that a small group were running the league to suit themselves. The clique still existed in some measure until Super League came on the scene in 1995.

Tom Wilson also remembers the workings of the clique. At the time of the Mulgoa Road
purchase, he was a delegate to the NSWRL. The league was concerned about the bad state of many of the playing fields and was pushing clubs to make improvements.

Back then, the Penrith ground was leased to us by the Department of Lands. For us to commit to spending any large sums of money on doing anything, we would need them to guarantee us something like a forty-year lease. Anyway, there was some talk of having our own playing field on the new land. When I tried to explain all this at a league meeting, the chairman, Kevin Humphreys, accused me – in his inimitable fashion – of hedging. Basically, he said I was bullshitting. I objected and asked for an apology, which I got.

But of course, that was not the end of it. When we all went downstairs for the usual drink after the meeting, I was completely ostracised. The only person who came near me was Peter Moore [former Canterbury CEO]. It was a strong lesson.

Charlie Gibson was widely regarded as part of that inner circle. He was a good friend of Humphreys, and the man that Mackie and the Super Six recommended for the job of rugby league secretary for Penrith.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Conflict · Football Club

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Culture — An Early Instance at Panthers

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.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Culture

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The Thomas Paynter Story

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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Related Themes

Culture

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  1. 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.
    ↩︎
  2. 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. ↩︎

Negotiating with Council — The Station St Road Closures

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.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Governance · Growth · Board Decisions · Licensed Club · Conflict

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The Bungool Picnic

This is Cowan’s description of what happened when the players were given the news that their pay would be “short”. This was taken directly from the manuscript.

We decided to go ahead with the picnic and pay the players half their contracts in the hope that we would be able to pay more later. When I turned up at the picnic, I found I was the only person from the football committee there. Everyone else, including Cartwright and the club’s president, had suddenly found they were unable to attend. It was up to me to explain to the players.

Most were OK with it, until it came to a player called Billy Tonkin. He was a terrific football player – big, tough, strong – and I’m sitting down. Billy’s next in line, and I say, “Bill, I can only give you half your money.”

Billy growls, “Yeah, Cowan, bullshit! You write my cheque out.”

I say, “Bill, I can only give you half.”

“Write the cheque for the full amount”, says Bill in a very menacing tone, leaning across the table.

The next bloke in the queue is Cec Reddy, who used to play hooker for us. Cec was only slightly built but he was a real pug. He used to box in the ring. Some people used to joke that he should sell advertising on the soles of his shoes.

Cec walks up to Bill and says, “Look, he said he can’t pay you, so leave him alone”. These two proceeded to have a big argument across the picnic area, but in the end, Bill did accept his half pay.

Max’s Notes

The drive to Bungool at Cattai — and back — felt long. The Club’s monthly journal even published directions for members to follow, a reminder of how different travel was at the time.

When I first read Roger’s account, I assumed it referred to the 1964 or 1965 season — certainly before Penrith entered the major competition in 1967. I can remember, even as a child, him returning home frustrated by events at the football club. This felt like one of those occasions, although there were many.

However, the reference to Billy Tonkin complicates that assumption.

Bill Tonkin (pictured right) was signed to Penrith in 1967. He is Player #11 and played in our opening game against Canterbury-Bankstown. Bill played 18 1st grade games in his two seasons (1967-8), scored 2 tries and kicked a goal for a total of 8 points. He was a lock forward who’d previously played for Balmain, Wests, and Souths.

If the player in Roger’s account was indeed Tonkin, the incident must have occurred in either 1967 or 1968 — suggesting it took place after Penrith’s admission to the competition. Alternatively, and almost certainly, the identity of the player has been misremembered.

Either way, the underlying issue remains clear.

The club had committed to player payments it could not meet. Those responsible for managing the football budget failed to address the situation in advance, and were not present when the consequences had to be explained.

Roger, a rookie then, was left to do so alone.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Growth · Licensed Club

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