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Just over twenty years after the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson, the first land grant in the Penrith district was awarded to Captain Daniel Woodriffe. As the colony grew, the town, with its strategic location on the Nepean River, became an important stop on the Western Road over the mountains, and later on the rail route to Katoomba and beyond.

Some readers may even remember taking the steam train to the Blue Mountains and having a cuppa or a snack while the train paused for ten minutes at Penrith, midway through the journey.

Rugby League came to Penrith around 1912, following the code’s breakaway from the traditional rugby union game. A regular competition was in operation by 1913 but there was reportedly friction in town between the two codes.

The first Penrith team was called the Waratahs, but for much of its history the Club simply played under the name of Penrith. The name ‘Panthers’ was adopted in 1964, after a public competition.

During the First World War times were sometimes tough for the club. One year, when the club was unable to buy shorts for the players, they ran onto the field in cut-down trousers.

Like many country clubs of the period, Penrith rugby league survived largely through the enthusiasm of local volunteers and the loyalty of its players and supporters.

The struggles continued through the 1920s, and in 1926 the club was reformed as the Penrith Rugby League Club. It was at this time that it applied for entry into the Western Division [Country] League, although there was some local opposition due to the travel demands involved.

Rugby League continued to grow in Penrith through the 1940s and 50s — and was, by all accounts, not a game for the faint-hearted. These were hard, tough men, and there was plenty of ‘biff’.  They were paid little, or nothing and played for the honour of their town — and also because they obviously enjoyed it.

Max Connors was first a committeeman, and later a director at the club, in the years between 1956 and 1981. He says football games used to be played on a paddock just out of town.

They moved to the showground around ’42-43. Cricket was played there in the summer, and the pitch had to be broken up each year so rugby league could be played. It eventually got to be a problem between the two groups.

Connors speaks of his boyhood in Penrith when the guesthouses at Wallacia were a popular holiday destination for city people. When the steam trains would pull in, he and his friends would descend on them and offer to carry the travelers’ bags to the bus to earn some money.

In the early 1950s, Penrith was still a small town on the outer fringes of suburbia. Its one department store was Western Stores — later to become Myer¹. The largest other business in town was Max Young’s produce business, which supplied feed, saddlery and other farming essentials to the district’s many rural properties.

In 1955, the first electric train service came to Penrith². and former player Merv Cartwright became secretary of the football club. Two other players came onto the scene around the same time — Leo “Trapper” Trevena and Reginald Ronald “Rocky” Davis. Both would have an impact on the growth of the club.

The mid-50s also saw the advent of the ‘district club’. Penrith was part of the Parramatta District and competed in the Parramatta A Grade Competition against clubs from Parramatta, Guildford, Merrylands, Liverpool, Richmond and other teams from a huge geographical area. This large area would later be broken up when Penrith became a District Club in its own right in 1967. Today Penrith and Parramatta have the largest rugby league districts of any Sydney team.

Even in 1956, the Penrith club was already showing its potential as an innovator. It was the first junior rugby league club to be granted a liquor license, and its first licensed club building was completed the same year. It was located in a back street of Penrith.³ It had two regular rooms, and a larger function room that was used for Saturday night dances and presentations, etc. 

For almost 20 years, the club also doubled as a boys’ club, and the club funded boxing and gymnastics activities for local youngsters. Its activities were transferred when the club agreed in the early seventies to jointly fund, with Penrith City Council, the Police Citizens Boys Club.

Connors remembers the first club as pretty much just a large garage in Station Street. He says they also bought the house next door, and that was where they held their meetings. The house had previously been a riding school — perhaps an indication of just how ‘country’ Penrith was in those days.

In an ironic twist, the first club building was financed by a gambling venture. Josie Haining — the wife of Bill Haining, a former player – won £100,00 in the Tasmanian Golden Casket, and the club was built using voluntary labour and a loan from Mrs Haining.

Don Feltis has a long history with the Club. He has been a player, football committeeman, football CEO, and is now junior league boss and a director on Panthers’ group board.

He remembers the day that a group of volunteers met to start digging the foundations for the new club:

We decided that the fairest way to work out who would have the honour of turning the first sod was to draw straws. So there we are, standing around organising the straws and sorting out lengths when we hear a ruckus behind us. We turn around and here’s one of the group — a fellow called Nobby Hunter — throwing a pick on the ground and very proudly showing us a hole the size of a bucket he’s just dug.

The building at first had six poker machines — three sixpenny and three one-shilling machines⁴.

Through the early sixties the club industry was just beginning to show its potential. St George Leagues Club was known as the Taj Mahal, and clubs like Easts Leagues and Souths Juniors were already an established part of the Sydney entertainment scene.

The Penrith Leagues Club, on the other hand, was a very small player. It had a couple of hundred members. It had never really been the mythical ‘tin shed’, but Max Connors, a director between 1956 and 1981, provided some insight into how the story came about.

The tin shed that people talk about was actually a kiosk on the showground where they used to play. It was run by the ladies, and the players used to get three free tickets each, and the supporters could buy three tickets for two shillings.

The kiosk doubled as a dressing-shed for players.

As the 1960s arrived, the club committee began pushing to join the league’s new inter-district competition — later to become Second Division. There was strong opposition from the club’s junior league. It was around this time, Trevena and Davis, along with Cartwright were joined on the football committee by a young high school teacher and player named Roger Cowan.

In 1962, the club joined the new competition, along with nine other Sydney clubs, including two much larger clubs, Ryde Eastwood and Wentworthville. Five years later, Penrith would leapfrog both these clubs to take a spot in the First Division competition.

The following year the licensed club underwent a major refurbishment, at a cost of £150,000. The new club had 26 poker machines. The 27 year old Cowan retired from playing football, but became football club treasurer. It was a move that would change his life.

It was the responsibility of the licensed club to fund rugby league, but at the end of the 1964 season Cowan was astounded to discover there were insufficient funds to pay the players. That year he stood for election for the licensed club committee, and became club treasurer, while still working as a teacher. He immediately began to implement controls and measures to improve the club’s finances. The club had embarked on an association with the man who would define its future.

What were the influences that made Panthers’ future CEO the person he turned out to be? What were the drivers behind the culture he encouraged at Panthers? And why much later did he allow conflict to escalate rather than backing away when the odds were stacking against him?

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1. The store referred to was Fletcher’s, which opened in 1941 as a gentleman’s outfitter. By the late 1950s and early 1960s it had become the largest department store in Penrith, employing more than 100 people. Fletcher’s became part of the Myer group in 1962.
   (Source: John Carvan, Standing Under the Weir: Penrith Memories.)
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2. The electrification of the railway line to Penrith in 1955 was a major local event. Prior to this, services had been operated by steam trains. The town formed an “Electrification Committee” to organise celebrations for the arrival of the first electric service. Dave Fitzgerald, President of Penrith Rugby League, served on that committee.
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3. Although described as a “back street” at the time, the club was located on the corner of Park and Station Streets. Park Street branched off Station Street roughly opposite the southern end of the swimming pool (near the showground). The area now forms part of the Nepean Village precinct.
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4. Other accounts place the initial poker machine fleet at ten machines, split evenly between sixpenny and one-shilling machines. See Bound for Glory (Greg Prichard and Gary Lester, p.30). ↩︎

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Commentary and Contributions

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Because of Cowan’s deep involvement in the licensed club industry, the history of Panthers cannot be separated from the broader history of the NSW club movement..

Phil Bennett¹ was an officer with the Liquor Administration Board² for many years. He remembers some of the interesting episodes. He had first encountered Cowan in the early 1980s. When Treasury was pushing to use turnover as the basis for taxing poker machine revenue, it was Bennett’s job to sell the concept to the clubs. Until then, only gross revenue had been taxed. Bennett said:

The idea was to tax the money being spent by the gamblers — a turnover tax³ — taking it off the top. Roger had a great moral difficulty with this, and he was very vocal.

I wrote a whole lot of papers and reports, and had to present them to the industry. By then I was in the policy section of the Chief Secretary’s department. We used the analogy of liquor . . . Clubs were paying a tax on the purchase of their liquor — which is like a turnover tax. And I also brought out other examples. So, we were trotting out all these arguments, and Roger would come back to me and say ‘that’s completely ridiculous, and a false analogy’. And proceed to explain in detail why it was, and shoot all my arguments down in flames. There was one day I distinctly remember. I had put together this paper and sent it to him, and then we met to discuss it. We were sitting opposite each other in his office, talking about the issues.

Roger presented a different analogy. ‘Look, this is different to a liquor tax. If you go and buy a beer, you pay tax on it at that point. But then you go into the toilet, and you piss it up against the wall, and it goes down the drain — and it’s all over. With gaming machines, if you put on a turnover tax, you’re taxing me when I spend it now, and then I get my money back when I get a payout. But then, if I bet it again you’ll make me pay another lot of tax, and when I win again you’ll tax it again, and again, and again.’

He was right, but we were saying that’s the way all gambling is taxed. At the races, the punter is taxed out of the turnover tax. But it was very funny. He sat there, looked across at me and said, ‘well, the person who wrote this paper obviously has no understanding of the club industry.’ He knew very well that I wrote it.

Cowan does not remember being so tactless:

When Phil asked me to discuss turnover tax I was appalled, and my body language was probably negative. I was convinced that one day we would have higher denomination machines and a turnover tax would restrict the return that we could offer the customers. The turnover tax they were proposing was only 3% and that sounded small enough to get acceptance from the industry. But I was concerned it would stifle the growth and eventually it would be unfair to players. I believed that higher denominations would eventually be part of the gaming market — and that should mean offering higher returns to the player. I knew for example that there were machines in the casinos in Las Vegas paying the player 99% — not many to be sure, but it would be impossible to do that under a turnover tax.

A turnover tax would force clubs to have machines set to the lowest possible return to players, and yet, it would be highway robbery to introduce high denomination machines at less than say, 94% return to players.

So, what I was trying to convey to Phil was that they were not looking at the future potential of the industry.

I was so concerned that I called a special meeting of several of the larger clubs and made a presentation to them of the dangers of a turnover tax. It was a long battle and finally the government saw the point and withdrew the proposal. Even though I was probably seen as the leader of the push to have it withdrawn, I never felt any sense of resentment from the government or the department officers . . .

If it had been a Carr/Egan government, I might have been facing a Royal Commission inquiry much sooner.

Bennett says:

You always knew that Roger would speak out if he believed that something was wrong. And he did his research, so he always knew what he was talking about.

Researching this book, I heard many words used to describe Roger Cowan, both positive and negative.

In recent years some have sought to attach another label to Cowan — dishonest.

Barrister Terrence Lynch⁴ says that from the start, he never believed that the inquiry would find any type of dishonesty in Cowan’s behavior.

I really was very relaxed about the inquiry. If a man is a crook, you don’t get staff five and six years in retirement still volunteering their time to assist him.

Dishonesty was just not consistent with any part of my exposure to what that place was like. My impression of Panthers is of a very internally open organisation. There never seemed to be the sense that if you disagree with Roger, there was going to be any discomfort or risk in doing that. You can’t operate dishonestly in such an open environment. And then, that flowed down through the organisation. I got the impression that he expected those people to be equally open with their own teams.

The events of 2004 have left permanent scars on Roger Cowan. There is no doubt that he sees Panthers as his life’s work, something that he could take pride in on his retirement. In his mind, the Inquiry, and the attendant headlines and publicity, altered that. That Inquiry, and the circumstances surrounding the events leading up to it, is a story that certainly needs telling.

The real story here is the growth of Panthers from a near-bankrupt suburban club into a significant force within the NSW club movement — and how that success eventually drew it into complex and contested political terrain.

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1. Phil Bennett worked in gaming-related departments within the NSW public service, including Treasury, the Liquor Administration Board, Casino Control and as Senior Policy Adviser in the Chief Secretary’s Department. In 1989 he established Phil Bennett Consulting, advising organisations in the gaming and liquor industries.
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2. The Liquor Administration Board (LAB) has since undergone structural and naming changes. Its current successor body is the Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority (ILGA) of NSW.
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3. A turnover tax is calculated on the total amount wagered rather than net loss. For example, if $10 is gambled and returns $100, and $40 of those winnings is wagered again, the tax applies to the total $50 wagered. For a fuller explanation, see The Impact of A Turnover Tax in Beyond the Book.
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4. Terrence Lynch was a member of the legal team engaged to represent Panthers during the Inquiry. Senior Counsel for the Panthers legal team was Bernie Coles KC.
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Commentary and Contributions

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Writing any book that attempts to record contested events is a daunting prospect.

Although the main purpose of this book is to document some important phases in the life of Panthers (the business), it is impossible to do it justice without also including some of the history of a CEO who served it for 40 years.

What was challenging about this story was that there are so many versions of Roger Cowan in people’s minds.

That was no surprise to him.

He says he came to the realisation many years ago that within each person there is a multiplicity of personalities. Each of us appears different in the eyes of everyone who knows us. A mother looks at her son and sees a very different person to the one his wife sees — or his mates, or his teacher. Cowan’s view of Ron Mulock would be poles apart from that of Mulock’s sons or friends. The same would apply to Mulock’s view of Cowan.

The task of setting a background for this book through an understanding of its characters is fraught with difficulty. It can only be completely reliable where indisputable facts are available. Many beliefs are based on opinions and will have to remain just that. Nevertheless, telling this story is important for two major reasons.

Firstly, the Panthers journey is interesting on a number of levels. Its growth, in many ways, runs parallel to that of the club industry in NSW. Standards and systems initiated at Panthers have been adopted by the industry, and sometimes even by government. The fact that one man was at the helm for forty years through that growth is also quite unusual in this country.

Secondly, and just as importantly, was the need to delve as deeply as possible into a story that must be told because of what it reveals about government and justice in NSW.

I first heard of Roger Cowan around 30 years ago¹ through two of my sons who were best mates with his youngest son, Phillip. My boys would often spend time at what they called the ‘round house’ — Roger’s and Phyllis’s residence on a hill overlooking the river at Emu Heights near Penrith. Roger was a ‘good bloke’, they told me. Roger and Phyllis Cowan still live in that same ‘round house’ that my sons used to visit. From my sons’ descriptions, it hasn’t changed all that much.²

I knew that Roger was secretary-manager of the Penrith League Club in Station Street, where I used to attend the odd concert. That was the extent of my knowledge. As a shop assistant in Penrith and later, when selling advertising, I watched the little local club grow and saw in 1984 the birth of Panthers World of Entertainment on Mulgoa Road in Penrith.

I did not meet the man until 1989 when I began work in the marketing department of Panthers. The atmosphere I encountered was unlike anything I had come across in 20 odd years in the workforce. I had always had a passion for writing but had been too busy working and raising kids to do much about it. Suddenly, writing became part of my working life. The Panthers environment was one that allowed people to develop their talents – to grab the ball and run with it.

In that situation you come to believe that anything is possible.

In 1992, around my 50th birthday, I knocked on Roger Cowan’s office door (it really was always open). I told him I had decided to apply for university and if accepted I would like to keep my job but reduce my hours significantly. We came to an agreement but after I got my degree, I moved on and became a journalist/editor in a small publishing company. Panthers continued to grow.

On visits back to Penrith, I would wonder at what was happening on Mulgoa Road. The club had now become the hub of a thriving business district.

When I visited Bathurst — or Newcastle — I found Panthers there also.

On an overseas trip, in 2003, I met an American couple who told me they had stayed at Panthers on a recent visit to Australia.

A seed was growing in the back of my mind – there is a good story here and somebody should write it one day.

In 2004, I began to read headlines that alarmed me. They were telling me things that I did not believe. Later, I heard an interview in which Roger Cowan said that one day he might write a book. Early in 2005 I contacted him. If he thought a book was worthwhile, but was unlikely to write it himself, I would like to try. I knew there were writers who were more experienced – and already published — who would have been more attractive options, but there was no harm in asking.

Roger’s answer was positive. He would tell his story. His only stipulation was that I would do the research, leave no stone unturned, talk with ALL the players and write as honest and objective a story as was possible with the time and the resources available. Some of the research was easy. Many people wanted to talk — even some from 40 years ago – and they had interesting tales to tell. Others declined, which was a pity.

As an author, I was starting from a certain position. I was also determined to present a balanced picture and try to sort out the myths from reality. The myths and stories were in abundance. Some played a big role in the events that unfolded.

Long before I ever went to work at Panthers, I had heard the stories. The man was a visionary. Well, that was pretty obvious — look what was growing on that big cow paddock on Mulgoa Road I used to pass as a kid, on the way to Wallacia in my school holidays.

There were stories about how he’d bought that land himself and sold it back to the Club at some outrageous profit. And rumours that said you don’t cross Roger Cowan, because ‘he’ll get you’.

That larger-than-life character was very far from what I found when I joined the Panthers marketing team in 1989. This was a very approachable man who not only listened — he also heard what you were saying. I found Roger Cowan a fair and honest person with an absolute passion for Panthers.

But old mythologies linger.

Someone from my own family was horrified that I was writing this book and took every opportunity to tell me what an evil person this man was. Who told you this stuff? I asked. Let me talk to them. Show me. If there’s something out there, I want to hear it. When I was eventually put in touch with one of the sources of her information, he said, I’ve got nothing bad to tell you about Roger. He was always fair in his dealings with me.

Rumours are passed on and accepted by many as truth. People said to me:

Jennie, I would love to talk to you — but I’m not about to tell you anything about Roger. He gets people. My response was, OK, give me an example. Give me the name of someone he’s “got”. Let me contact them and see whether they’ll talk to me.

Quite a few said, I don’t have any examples, but I’ve heard plenty of stories. A couple said, why don’t you speak to so-and-so, he can tell you lots of stories about Roger; or talk to Joe Bloggs, he hates Roger Cowan!

So, I spoke to those people. And yes, some may have had a beef with Roger at some time but in each of them there was high respect, regard and, in some cases, real affection for the man. They are some of the characters in this tale.

Roger Cowan has some real enemies, and a couple of them did speak to me. Their stories are told in the book. They are certainly not part of the mythology. Myths have ogres and dragons and assorted bogey men but as we tell our children, they can’t really hurt you. Enemies can.

When Roger first took over as Panthers CEO, he had a plan to work in every job in the club for a set amount of time. Could have been two or three weeks — maybe a month — but he did it because he didn’t want to ask the employees to do any job that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t do, himself. He did it all, things like cleaning, picking up glasses, bar work, poker machines, etc.

More than one person who worked at the Club in those early days offers this story as fact; they were there and saw it happen.

Cowan’s version differs:

I often worked with staff in informal ways, but it is an exaggeration to say I did every job as part of any plan. For instance, in the early days I did some cleaning so that I could know what reasonable times could be allocated to different tasks.

This is how myths grow. From the mouths of people who were there, they are believable. They are usually based on some element of fact and the facts are embellished as the story grows. This principle applies to the negative stories as well as the positive ones.

In a 1999 article in the Leadership Victoria Journal, Rod Myer observed that our tall poppy syndrome results from feelings of inadequacy, and envy of successful people. They then think that those high-fliers “couldn’t have done that without help or money or stomping on people or doing something underhanded”.

The story that Cowan profited from selling the Mulgoa Road land is an example. It has never been sold³. A government official remembers being involved in an investigation:

I saw the documentation. It showed that within a matter of days, or maybe even on the same day, the property was sold at a huge profit. Of course, the word going around at the time was that Roger Cowan had benefited from that.

In fact, neither Cowan nor any other intermediary bought or sold the land. Cowan says the story relates to the site of the original club in Station Street. And yes, there was a huge profit, but not for him or Panthers. This story will be told later.

Roger Cowan walked away from Panthers in 2005 with many friends, a few sworn enemies and a trail of myths and stories. He also left a legacy. The tiny club he walked into in 1965 is now a giant enterprise that is a positive part of the lives of multitudes of people.

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1. Panthers, Passion and Politics was first published in 2007. At the time of this republication, nearly fifty years have passed since the author first heard of Roger Cowan.
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2. The family home was sold in December 2011, following the events covered by this book.
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3. Portions of the Mulgoa Road property have since been sold to a developer. The sale occurred after Roger Cowan’s retirement. Stage 1 of the residential development has been completed, with Stage 2 underway at the time of this note.
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Commentary and Contributions

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Originally written by Roger Cowan for the 2006 publication. Minor typographical corrections have been made.
Editorial footnotes reflect updates since original publication.

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My purpose in getting involved with this book was at first quite narrow. I wanted to set the record straight.

Over the last six years of my career as CEO of Panthers there was a sustained effort to discredit and damage me and it was, in many ways, very successful. To see a 40-year career come to a climax of consistent attacks by a small group of locals, the state government and The Sydney Morning Herald was a huge disappointment. There was a concerted effort by some powerful individuals and organisations to brand me with the corruption label.

However, I eventually came to the conclusion that it serves no useful purpose to be driven by revenge. Cheap shots at those who tried so hard to destroy my reputation would only reduce the credibility of a story that is important in many ways. The facts speak for themselves and the reader will undoubtedly see many instances of dishonesty or corruption in these pages. Placing labels where they fit best will be left to the reader to a very great extent.

For most of my career at the club I enjoyed excellent relationships with boards. The growth of Panthers would not have been possible otherwise. Throughout sections of the book, there are a number of criticisms of the ‘board’. They relate to events that occurred during some conflicts in the latter part of my tenure with Panthers. I wish to make it very clear that no criticism was ever intended of the four stalwarts who were in the minority during that period, and in no position to insist on better outcomes. The Panthers board that exists today¹ is far different, and no current director could be criticised for any of the injustices described here. In fact, it could well be argued that today’s Panthers board ranks as one of the best the club has ever had.²

On a number of occasions people told me that they did not need a book to convince them of the truth. They are friends of course, and there were more than I anticipated who stood by me — some because they were close to the action and knew the truth, and others because they were so supportive, they refused to believe the headlines.

But there are many thousands who would have believed the headlines. One example is the businessman who was attending a meeting of a company of which I am a director. He did not know me, or anything about my background. He was explaining to the meeting, as an example of dishonesty, the recent case of the CEO of Panthers ripping the club off through his private company. This was more than a year after Ian Temby had handed down his findings.

My friends put him straight, but — for me — the point was made.

The author, Jennie Bentley, had a long-held ambition to tell the Panthers story from the business point of view and, after some initial doubts, I could see that just focusing on the more recent years was far too narrow a view of a business that grew from such a tiny seed to its position today. So, we agreed that she would write the history of Panthers. I warned her she would have to do all the research and she had to remain as objective and factual as possible. There are sections of this book highly critical of dishonesty in the media and it would be hypocritical to the extreme to publish this book without a strong regard for objectivity and accuracy.

Of course, there are opinions expressed but, hopefully always in such a way that they can be identified as opinion and not masquerading as fact.

Many people would categorise some of the behaviour of the NSW Labor government, described here, as dishonesty and injustice. But that is not the story.

The message in this book, as I see it, is more important than that.

The history of Panthers shows how a wonderful, community focused business can be built by the co-operative, unselfish efforts of thousands of people working together. But it also gives frightening proof of how easily it can be undermined by a clash of values, and the negative influence of small numbers of people pursuing their own agenda.

Every day we are confronted with graphic examples of TV beat-ups to win ratings, and dishonest statements made to win elections. Excesses in the media and in government are damaging the fabric of our society and we accept it as a way of life.

Horrendously oppressive legislation is still in place that denies normal levels of justice to officers of clubs, and nobody is screaming for its repeal.³

I cannot resist having my say about one of the more interesting events, and to admit that it was only in the last couple of months of preparation for publication that I came to an astonishing realisation. Unfortunately, it came two years too late. Had I been smart enough to see it earlier I think I would have handled some major events in my life much differently.

Why did I miss it? The explanation is simple. I was not sufficiently strong of mind to avoid going into complete defence mode when I was attacked. What was going on consumed my mind for every minute of every day for many months. Hundreds of hours were spent digging through old records, preparing reports, analysing evidence and meeting with solicitors.

The lesson I learnt is this:

When you are being attacked — no matter how viciously — and you are absolutely absorbed by the need to defend, you must stop. Stop for sufficient blocks of time every day, move out of defence mode and focus on fully understanding what you are defending.

Working through those events for this book, I realised that I had spent all that time trying to defend allegations that actually had no merit and could not possibly have justified treatment at a Royal Commission level. With that realisation, every grain of logical thought could only take me to one possible conclusion:

The Temby Inquiry was called by the government for one, and only one, purpose — to help the government win the battle for public perception of its unfair tax impost on clubs.

A media eager to feast on stories about high profile people and organisations could only help it justify its actions.

I came to believe that there is overwhelming evidence that a democratically elected government and a major newspaper were so intent on building a particular public perception that they were willing to sacrifice my reputation, my health, and my financial security. They showed willingness also to sacrifice the rights of citizens of this supposedly “fair-go” country for their own ends.

The book suffers a little in its objectivity because some of the main actors in the most recent years refused to be interviewed or even answer written questions.

So, now I’ve got that off my chest, let’s get focused on Jennie’s tale of the growth of Panthers, and say how much we appreciate the contribution of all those who agreed to be interviewed. Unfortunately, Jennie wasn’t able to use all the material she collected but we are just as appreciative to those who finished on the cutting room floor as to those who are reported.

I believe Jennie did an excellent job of putting her extensive research into an interesting format. I appreciate her sincerity and thoroughness; and the great teamwork we built during the process. The excellent guidance of Matthew Richardson of Halstead Press — who no doubt took very little time we were first book novices – made an enormous difference to the final product.

I am especially grateful to my wife, Phyllis, for helping me through some nasty periods and my three sons and their wives for their unwavering support and faith in me.

And I dedicate this book to my seven grandchildren, whose future in this country will be more assured when honesty becomes the number one value in both government and media, and we have sufficient insight to know when it is being violated.

Roger Cowan

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1. This Foreword was written in 2006. From approximately 2008, Panthers’ governance structure began changing with an increased operational involvement by members of the Board. ↩︎
2. This comment refers to the Board structure and composition as it existed at the time of writing (2006). The governance model changed in subsequent years. ↩︎
3. Section 41X of the Registered Club Act (NSW) referred to here has subsequently been repealed. ↩︎

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Commentary and Contributions