Negotiating a Good Deal Becomes the Act of a Criminal

Part 24 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 8: A Taste of Injustice

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

The second part of the police investigation was about the club’s purchase of 100 poker machines.

Bob Donaghy was one of the club’s two assistant managers, and his responsibilities included purchase of poker machines. Aristocrat was the largest manufacturer in the industry, but the Club had not bought any of its machines for quite a long period. Donaghy believed the quality of their machine design and security had slipped. But when the club was ready to freshen up its gaming area with 100 new machines, Donaghy recommended the latest release by Aristocrat, telling Cowan he now had confidence in their products.

They began to talk about cost. The listed price of the machines was $7,000 each. Cowan suggested that they go to Aristocrat with an offer. It was a large purchase, maybe even unprecedented in Australia. As such, it should warrant a considerable discount. They decided to offer $5,000 per machine. conditional on Aristocrat arranging the finance for leasing and subsidising the interest rate.

Aristocrat mostly agreed with the proposal but set a total price of $530,000 for the 100 machines; still an extraordinarily large discount on the $700,000 they would have paid at list price. Cowan and Donaghy were celebrating. It was a straightforward transaction, and they had done a great deal. The complications arose for Panthers in the accounting offices of Aristocrat.

Aristocrat had obtained leasing finance for the total amount of $530,000, and that was correct. But they had listed only 90 machines on their sale documents. In effect, they had financed 90 machines for $530,000 and given Panthers ten machines at no charge. It made no difference to the club, and it was Aristocrat’s own choice to account for the machines the way they did, but the ramifications moved even beyond the police investigations at Panthers in 1985, to resound in the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission in 1990.¹

The purchase was the subject of almost a full hour of questioning by Mick Howe after the fraud squad officer had left having no more interest. Cowan tried in vain to explain how the price of the machines and the interest rate had been discounted. He says the long conversation seemed to travel around in circles but it can be summarised easily in just a few paragraphs:²

Mick Howe: I have been to the Liquor Administration Board to examine the records of your poker machine purchases and I found that you had applied for the purchase of 100 machines. There were 100 serial numbers listed. I then did a survey of the machines in the club and found all 100 machines with those serial numbers. However, when I looked at the finance company records I found only 90 machines listed on their records.

Cowan: I don’t know what is listed in the finance company records, but I cannot understand what the problem is. We bought 100 machines at a heavily discounted price, and we correctly submitted licence numbers to the department. You know that all the machines have been installed, and you know that Aristocrat has been paid for them. I don’t understand what you think is wrong with the transaction?

Mick Howe: You know, that’s what I have been trying to figure out, and now I can see it. If the club goes broke, the finance company will only be able to repossess 90 machines, yet they have financed the payment for 100.

Reflecting on this exchange Cowan commented,

I was astounded at the detective’s logic: “Well so what!” I said. “We would hardly buy 100 machines if we thought we were likely to be going broke. In any event, if we had paid the list price for the machines, the borrowings would have been a lot more and the finance company’s security a lot less.”

Mick Howe remained unconvinced. He just did not get it.

The third matter for police investigation was the sale of the Station Street property. Rumours of something questionable in that transaction were investigated. Most of the police and government officers involved in the police raids on Panthers walked away satisfied that Cowan and the Club had nothing to answer on the original allegations.

Mick Howe stood out as the expectation.

The Station Street property transactions, discussed earlier in this series as part of the Club’s property strategy³, were also examined. Again, investigators found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

By now, most of the allegations that had prompted the raids had failed to produce the evidence investigators had hoped to find. For many involved, the matter appeared to be drawing to a close. Detective Sergeant Mick Howe saw things differently.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

Read Beyond the Book — Queensland Criminal Justice Commission for more on this. ↩︎
The following paragraphs are not a verbatim conversation but a paraphrasing of the conversation that eliminates the repetition and redundancy that characterises these types of discussion. ↩︎
See Part 13 — Bulding the Future, a Block at a Time ↩︎

← Part 23 · All Parts · Part 25→

Commentary and Contributions

The First Shot at Phyro

Part 23 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 8: A Taste of Injustice

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

The first few questions of the interview, led by Detective-sergeant Mick Howe, implied that Phyro Holdings¹ was acting fraudulently, secretly, and without the knowledge of the Board. This complaint seemed of great interest to the fraud squad officer.

Cowan explained that Phyro was his family company, and it had a contract to provide certain services to the club. He reached into his desk drawer and handed over a contract. Some minutes passed as they went through the document. The fraud squad detective paused and drew Howe’s attention to one specific part on the last page of the contract. They both seemed surprised, and a quick look passed between them.

The fraud squad officer asked Cowan a few more questions, then made to leave. He said to Cowan,

I’ve heard enough. Mick might want to ask a few questions about some other matters, but I don’t need to be involved any further.

And he left the office.

Cowan says it took him a while to catch on to what had happened to cause the quick exit by the fraud squad officer.

That night I was lying in bed still trying to figure it out. What was in the contract that was such a surprise? They had not reacted until they reached the end of it. What was on the last page? Suddenly it hit me. The only thing on that page was the signatures of the parties to the agreement! Why would those signatures surprise them? Certainly, there was no surprise in mine being there, so it must have been one of the others.

It could only mean that the person who signed the letter of complaint to the Assistant Commissioner must have been the same person who had signed the Phyro contract. The person who wrote that the Board knew nothing of Phyro had actually signed the Phyro contract. No wonder the fraud squad detective signed himself off the case so quickly.²

The detectives had also told him that the informant was someone who was seen by the police as highly credible. A director who was a long-standing ex-chairman would certainly fill that description.

The letter of complaint has never been seen by any officer of the club, so its contents — and its signatory — can only be assumed. Whatever was in it, however, had brought large numbers of police and government officers on the Club. To prompt such strong action, the allegations must have led them to suspect dishonesty and breaches of the Registered Clubs Act.

What really bothers me about this affair is that the first part of the complaint had been discredited in the first half hour of the interview. The fraud squad officer acted accordingly. He was not wasting any more time once he saw that the complaint was flawed.

But Mick Howe was not so easily satisfied.

Current group chairman Barry Walsh³ was a director in 1985. He says it was the big topic of conversation around Penrith that the detective was after Cowan, and he was a very determined man.

‘But Phyro was no secret anyway’, says Walsh. It just wasn’t a big deal for anybody.’

Phil Bennett agrees with Barry Walsh that Phyro’s role and ownership were no secret. He says the investigative accountants went through everything at the time of the investigations.

I think one of them stayed on after the rest of us left. At that time Phyro Holdings was common knowledge. You would always read in the annual report, stuff about Phyro owning certain property.

Bennett points out that the name is “obviously compounded from Phyllis and Roger”.

Cowan remembers the several months of continuous inquiry as one of the most stressful periods he has ever experienced. The investigation itself was not a problem, he says, it was the rumours of Howe’s determination to ‘get him’.

The rumours were strong that Mick Howe had stated that he did not like Panthers, did not like me, and was confident he would find incriminating evidence. At that stage we were already a big organisation, with 850 employees. It is easy to make mistakes running a business that size. We had good systems in place, but there was always the fear that there might be something wrong that I knew nothing about, and it would be used against me.

I had that constant feeling of being in deadly competition with a well-armed predator and I was the defenceless prey. The hunter had all the time and resources he wanted, and he could attack from any angle. I had two choices, stand out in the open and let him see every side of the target, or go into defence mode by employing a good legal advisor.

I had chosen to stand out in the open. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a dumb move on my part.⁴

Barry Hubbard was also a director at the time of the police raid. He says everybody was feeling the pressures of Howe’s campaign.

Roger wondered if someone in the club was ‘talking’ to the police and giving them information. He went to each of the directors and asked us.

‘I told him “no”’, says Hubbard. But he was upset by the question.

I said, “Roger, if I knew of anything illegal that was going on in this club, I would first take it to the Board, and if nothing was done, only then would I go to the police”.

Hubbard says that around the time of the licensing raid, he was also questioned by a Penrith detective about a house he had bought from the club. The detective suggested that he had bought the house for nothing, or at a token fee. It was a ridiculous claim, says Hubbard, and he was easily able to prove that he’d paid the right amount for the house.

The same policeman later got in touch with him, asking did he know of anything dishonest that was going on in the club, and suggesting that he keep his eyes open. Hubbard assured him there was nothing, but the calls continued over the next couple of months, asking the same questions.

I wrote to the detective, telling him what I had told Roger. If I knew of anything untoward in the club, it would go straight to the board. If they did nothing, I would take it to the police. I also asked him to stop calling me.

For directors such as Hubbard, the repeated approaches from Howe and his colleagues reinforced the impression that the investigation was not winding down, despite the failure of the original allegations.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd is the family company of Roger & Phyllis Cowan contracted to Penrith Rugby League Club Ltd to supply various services including the publications of The Panthers Magazine.
↩︎
Some 20 years later this scenario was replicated. Directors or former directors publicly asserting they had no knowledge of Phyro Holdings and the slipping on their story, showing they must have had knowledge. The final “slip-up” was during the Temby Inquiry when testimony by a former director in one session was recanted the next morning for fear of being in contempt.
↩︎
Barry Walsh was appointed Chairman when Leo Armstrong retired, and he held that position until 2009 when Don Feltis took the Chair.
↩︎
This approach was not unusual for Cowan, his belief that it was besst to be very open with investigators was considered naive by many colleagues and supporters of Cowan’s. Many saw it as a weakness that made him vulnerable to being ambushed. ↩︎

← Part 22 · All Parts · Part 24→

Commentary and Contributions

An Investigation Starts

Part 22 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 8: A Taste of Injustice

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

One afternoon in 1986, Roger Cowan was driving back from a meeting of the Registered Clubs Association in Sydney when he received a phone call from the club.

The call was to advise him that about 12 police and officers from the Liquor Administration Board had arrived at the club. They were demanding to see all the club records including minutes of meetings and financial records. There had been no prior notification of the raid. In Cowan’s absence, the task of meeting the officers fell to Glenn Matthews, then a young accountant. Nobody at the club had any idea of the purpose of the visit, or what they were looking for.

Phil Bennett¹, now with his own computer graphics company, was a gaming machine inspector for the LAB at the time and had worked with some of the police officers before. The officer leading the investigation was Detective Sergeant Mick Howe from the NSW Poker Machine Task Force. Howe had requested that Bennett join in the raid.

The group descended on the Club believing that Cowan would be on the premises. It was a logical assumption – he was there most days, from quite early in the morning. When he wasn’t, they jumped to the conclusion that he had seen them coming and left, adding fuel to the notion that he had something to hide.

Cowan, as we know, had not been in the club that day because of the meeting in Sydney. There was no way he could have known of the police visit.

At the time it was seen as a big deal, says Bennett. Mick had brought in a whole lot of people from other units – the Fraud Squad, Corporate Affairs, and the Sydney police unit that did all their accounting investigations.

The NSW police Poker Machine Task Force had been set up to overcome gaming machine crime. Steve Foote² came to Penrith as a police constable soon after the raid on Panthers. He was later to become part of the NSW police’s Licensed Gaming Investigation section. He is no longer in the police force, but he is aware of the raid, and of the task force and its history. The Task Force was, he says, ‘a clandestine operation that had special powers from the commissioner’.

Nothing like this had ever happened at the Club. The LAB investigated complaints from time to time, and made regular routine visits, but this was unprecedented. Before returning to the club, Cowan contacted the club’s solicitor, John Ffrench, to see if he knew anything about it and to ask for advice.

Ffrench’s first reaction was very cautious. He tactfully suggested to Cowan that if he was aware of anything that the police might find in their investigations, he should ‘come clean’.

The idea was, if there were any ‘snakes in the woodpile’, it would be better for John to know in advance rather than be surprised later. He satisfied himself that I had no knowledge of anything that could be of interest to the police, and we talked about what we should do next.

My preference was to simply answer all their inquiries and be quite open with the records. As far as I was concerned there was nothing to hide. But it was obvious that the police thought they had something, just because of the gung-ho way they were approaching the whole thing.

I wondered if I should have a solicitor with me when I was interviewed, but I still didn’t see the need. At first, John Ffrench thought that I should, but we finally agreed that I would go without legal representation and give the police every co-operation. In that way it would all be over quickly, and the club would be cleared of all suspicion.

That strategy backfired badly, but much later and for different reasons.

Ffrench called the officer in charge and set up an interview in my office for the following morning. In fact, that was the last involvement of the club’s solicitor in that chain of events. In hindsight that proved to be a serious mistake.

The officers conducting the interview were Mick Howe and a detective sergeant from the fraud squad. Cowan remembers being impressed by the fraud squad detective. He was highly qualified academically, asked probing questions, seemed to understand situations quickly and was all business and no nonsense. He seemed to assess what was happening quickly and then lose interest.

At that moment though, Cowan was asking himself how had he come to that point? Later, things would slowly fall into place and he would see a strong connection to an innocent event that caused some friction 2 years earlier at the end of Season 1984.³

The connections — between the end of season event and the police raid – began to fall in place for Cowan after the first police interview.

At the outset of the police interview, Cowan was told that the investigation arose from a written complaint to the Assistant Commissioner of Police. It would cover a number of issues, but there were three specific matters of importance. Cowan’s family company, Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd, was one matter. The second was related to the club’s purchase of 100 poker machines from Aristocrat. The third matter was the sale of a property in Station Street, Penrith, the site of the club’s premises before it moved to Mulgoa Road.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

Phil Bennett is the principal of Phil Bennett Consulting, established in 1989 to provide gaming consultancy services to clubs, hotels and casinos.
↩︎
Steve Foote grew up in the Penrith region, attending Penrith High School. After leaving the NSW Police Force, he took various roles in the safety & security sector. He is now retired and focuses on art.
↩︎
For Cowan there was a connection between this Police raid and an invitation to players & officials for drinks in the Boardroom after the final round game of the 1984 Season. You can read about this in Beyond the Book – The End Of Season Drinks That Weren’t So Cordial ↩︎

← Part 21 · All Parts · Part 23→

Commentary and Contributions

The Right Structure. Finally!

Part 21 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 7: The 16 Year Struggle to Streamline Rugby League

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

The structural compromise — two CEOs answering to a single board — had not resolved the underlying problems. If anything, it had deepened them. By the early 1980s, the consequences were becoming impossible to ignore — both on and off the field.

The Gibson years saw the Penrith football team continue its sad record of recent times. The club was putting major resources into building the new premises, and there was criticism that the team’s rugby league performance was a direct reflection of that spending.

In their 1992 book Bound for Glory, Greg Pritchard and Gary Lester tell of that period. They quote 1980-81 coach, Len Stacker, as saying that rugby league funds had been frozen before the 1981 season, although this has been disputed by Roger Cowan. Stacker also said he had been forced to bring in some ‘blokes from the bush’ to prop up the numbers. One of these bush blokes turned out to be Royce Simmons, the hero of Penrith’s first premiership and the city’s favourite son.

Also playing for Penrith at the time was Tim Sheens. He had finished 1982 with the club record for the number of games played (166) and was looking forward to the season. Gibson went off on his Kangaroo tour, telling Sheens he would talk to him when he came back.

When Gibson returned, Sheens went to his office to see him. Gibson told him that there was no point in even sitting down. The club had overspent and there was no room for Sheens, who was dropped from the team. Instead, they had signed Tony D’Arcy, a rugby union international, at almost twice the salary of Penrith’s highest paid player. D’Arcy was never to play a first-grade game for Penrith.

By the end of 1983, the football club reached its lowest level yet. It finished close to the bottom of the competition, it had only two players on contract for the following year, and it had no coach.

Even Royce Simmons has said he seriously considered leaving the club at the end of 1983. Community support had dropped along with the team’s performance, resulting in an income shortfall. An injection of funds was urgently needed, but the club was being held on a tight budget. The club under construction over on the Mulgoa Road property incurred significant cost increases, causing anxious moments in management and at the bank.

The dismal prospects now facing the football team were enough to convince the Board. It finally voted to put rugby league back under the control of Roger Cowan. Gibson left soon after and successfully sued the club for wrongful dismissal. Keith Rhind, when he took the chairman’s seat, had formed a close friendship with Gibson but he would ultimately be instrumental in Gibson’s departure from the club.

‘It was one of the worst periods in my life’, he says, ‘and it still upsets me to think about it.’

When it came to the vote that would ultimately oust Charlie, it was four all and I had the casting vote. But I had been put in an impossible position. Whichever way I went, I was going to lose friends, but I knew that things couldn’t continue the way they were. I did what I believed was best for the club and voted to move the responsibility for rugby league to the licensed club management.

When it came to the vote that would ultimately oust Charlie, it was four all and I had the casting vote. But I had been put in an impossible position. Whichever way I went, I was going to lose friends, but I knew that things couldn’t continue the way they were. I did what I believed was best for the club and voted to move the responsibility for rugby league to the licensed club management.

The board decided that Cowan’s role would be expanded to include both the licensed club and the rugby league club, and his contract was changed again by mutual agreement. There would be one board of directors and one chief executive of the entire organisation.¹ It was the model that Cowan had been advocating for so many years.

After a decade of advocating change, Cowan now had the chance to prove the model that he had recommended. But he had a massive job ahead of him. Three years of compromise had put the club into a weak position. It had money problems, no coach and hardly any players.

He attacked the problem using a tactic that had proved successful within the licensed club. The think-tank-style brainstorming sessions had produced many good ideas for the business, so he decided to carry it through in his new role.

At the end of 1983, he invited a large number of key stakeholders to attend workshops at the Club. The objective was to bring together the people who had an interest, or who would benefit from a successful, competitive rugby league team. There were directors and players, club officials and some former players, representatives from the media and local businesses, even some politicians. The junior league and school rugby league were also well represented. He told them they had to take ownership of the problems, and find solutions they could all support.²

The workshops were facilitated by Cowan. Despite the gloomy outlook, there was a great deal of enthusiasm and a commitment to succeed irrespective of obstacles.

Again, the results would be positive – this time for rugby league in the district.

There had never been a state or Australian representative player from the Penrith Junior District. Arising from the workshop, the Five by Five Committee was formed. Its goal was to develop five representative players in five years – and it succeeded.

The schools and junior league forged closer relationships, and ideas came up for a stronger junior competition. Profiles of coaches were drawn up. But the most important outcome was a greater feeling of ownership and sharing of the problems throughout the community.

Tim Sheens attended the workshops, but he had a family commitment and left early. Cowan says he had been most impressed by Sheens’ contribution to the workshops and by his strong sense of loyalty to Penrith. Much of the discussion had centred on the type of coach they would need. Sheens had presented strong ideas about coaching and players – and about club management.

It became clear to Cowan that Sheens would be the ideal coach for Penrith. When he discussed his thoughts with some close associates, he found that they had been equally impressed.

When Cowan contacted Sheens, he discovered he was too late. He and wife Rhonda were moving to North Queensland. They had sold their furniture and were ready to leave within days. Further meetings followed, including a momentous dinner with the couple. By the end of the night, both could see the opportunity.

Rhonda Sheens encouraged her husband to take up the challenge. It was a big decision for her — she had been looking forward to a move back to Queensland to be closer to her family. Tim Sheens became the first grade coach, and agreed to also take on some management duties, including recruitment of players.

In his first year, Penrith missed the play-offs by a whisker. In 1985 Sheens guided the club to its first ever semi-final appearance.

For the following 15 years, the model stood firm. The board set all policy for the entire club including rugby league, and achieving that policy was the responsibility of one person, the CEO of the group. At times Cowan would take on the role of rugby league chief executive. He would have a manager looking after day-to-day issues, but be personally responsible for higher level decisions.

I really enjoyed that role, but when someone was doing a good job – Don Feltis and Mark Levy for instance – I promoted them to the top football position.

The reform had gone beyond the CEO and board — it now meant one management team working in harmony for the betterment of every part of Panthers. The catering manager was now just as likely to have input into rugby league strategies, as the rugby league CEO might have into staff motivation principles for the bars.

But even though Cowan had achieved the goal of ‘one board, one CEO’ at the end of 1983, the Board remained precariously balanced.

A spur of the moment decision by Cowan and Armstrong after a football game at the end of the 1984 season was enough to tip the balance, and almost put Hewett back in the chair. More importantly, it would put some events in motion that led to two police raids on Panthers.

The record books also show that from the time the model was implemented in 1984, there was a marked improvement on the rugby league side. In 1985 the first grade side made the semi-finals and in 1988, they lost a play-off for fifth place. In 1989 they made the finals. In 1990 they were grand finalists and in 1991 the Panthers won the trophy.

The success was not only on the scoreboard. A new sponsorship scheme with the Penrith Star newspaper began to ease the financial burden on the registered club. As the performance of the team improved, crowds began to pick up, which also had an impact on the bottom line.

Tim Sheens stayed until 1987, to be replaced by veteran coach, Ron Willey. Willey’s unorthodox methods led to unresolvable problems with the players, and Cowan negotiated a resignation settlement with him. In late 1989, Cowan and football chief executive Ross Gigg were able to recruit Phil Gould. Gould, who had begun his playing career with Panthers, had coached Canterbury to a premiership in 1988. After losing the grand final to Canberra in 1990, Gould steered the Panthers to their first premiership a year later.

In 1984, the same year that the new management model for rugby league was implemented, the club was opened in Mulgoa Road amid a fanfare of free publicity. It was a brand new model for licensed clubs, and it set the bar higher for the club industry. Both events were turning points for Panthers.

Although the new club opened in a blaze of favourable publicity, it had not been completed. The long delays in getting approvals and other factors beyond the club’s control contributed to a blow-out in the costs of construction. The main entertainment room was an empty shell until profits could be used to complete it. A large part of the car park was left unfinished.

In the planning phases of the new complex, the concept of motel accommodation came up. It would fit neatly into the club’s objectives, but the costs blow-out forced it into the “deferred ideas” drawer.

However, the builder could also see the potential. He made an offer to build a motel adjoining the new complex, and it was accepted. The agreement was that the club would sell the builder the required area of land for one dollar. The builder would then use the equity in that land to finance construction. Panthers would lease the motel back and manage it until it had the funds to purchase it. The Club had an option to purchase the motel and the land for the cost of construction, plus an agreed profit for the builder. The land would be part of that package and would be put back in at a one dollar value. It was a brilliant scheme, and it worked well for all the parties involved.³

The 54 room Panthers Motor Inn was completed in 1986, with 115 more rooms approved by the Board in 1988. The Club sold it – now 216 rooms – in 2006, for $28.5 million.⁴

Panthers barrister Terrence Lynch says that this transaction was one that DGR counsel, David Staehli, seized upon in the 41X inquiry, sure that at last he finally ‘had’ Roger Cowan. His hopes were dashed when Cowan was able to show exactly what had happened throughout the entire process.

The new rugby league regime brought the football club the successes that had eluded it for its first 17 years, including two premierships and several finals appearances. The new Panthers licensed club brought significant changes in management and structure, unprecedented growth, and the completion of assets that would ensure the security and cash flow of the organisation through some very difficult times.

But behind the scenes it was not all beer and skittles. John Hewett still carried a badly wounded ego. Cowan’s erstwhile friend and supporter, club patron Ron Mulock, was showing early signs of disapproval about the dramatic growth of the Club.

The football team was finally making its mark, and the business was showing the potential that would take it into the top 300 private companies. In the midst of the successes, trouble was simmering that would eventually bring Panthers and Cowan into their darkest periods.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

This decision fundamentally changed the governance structure of Panthers and helped resolve a decade of conflict over the management of rugby league. For a more detailed explanation of why the “one board, one CEO” model became so important see Beyond the Book — Why One Board, One CEO.
↩︎
Beyond the Book — The 1983 Strategic Reset explains how governance reform, the appointment of Tim Sheens and the Five by Five Committee formed part of a broader change in Panthers’ approach to football.
↩︎
The arrangement was designed to overcome the club’s immediate financial constraints. The builder funded construction and accepted the development risk, while Panthers retained the right to acquire the completed motel and land at a pre-agreed future price.
↩︎
The financial transactions around this part of the Mulgoa Road development would later be examined during the Temby 41X Inquiry where the legitimacy of the arrangement was able to be demonstrated. ↩︎

← Part 20 · All Parts · Part 22 →

Commentary and Contributions

Charlie Gibson and the Culture Clash

Part 20 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 7: The 16 Year Struggle to Streamline Rugby League

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Although the new structure fell short of the model Cowan had long advocated, it was seen at the time as a significant step forward.

Both Cowan and the board were pleased with the appointment of Charlie Gibson. He was part of rugby league’s inner circle¹, a close friend of Kevin Humphreys, and the man recommended by Mackie and the Super Six for the role of rugby league secretary at Penrith.

The ad appearing in the SMH in August 1980 produced a large number of applicants and resulted in the appointment of Charlie Gibson.

Gibson came with excellent credentials. He had been secretary of the South Sydney club for ten years and was there during the club’s winning streak of four premierships between 1967 and 1971. While the structure fell far short of the ultimate solution Cowan had been fighting to achieve for more than ten years, it was a huge step in the right direction. The Board and Cowan made an agreement that he would concentrate on the licensed club and take no further part in rugby league management. Cowan recalls;

We all thought – great! Charlie really knows his way around the rugby league world and that is what we need. We thought it could be the turning point in our rugby league fortunes.

I thought the board was making a mistake by having him report direct to the board, but I was willing to give it a go. I even agreed to have my contract changed to reflect that rugby league was no longer part of my responsibilities.

Charlie’s role was going to involve a lot of co-operation with the licensed club management in areas of accounting, ground maintenance, and in football-related marketing and promotions.

My vision for the club had always been a structure that united all the expertise available. For example, the club’s catering manager was far better qualified to manage rugby league functions than honorary committees or a rugby league manager. The club’s maintenance and cleaning managers could look after the ground. Financial management could come under the club’s finance manager. Making rugby league successful would require a united effort and a high degree of co-operation.

Problems began to emerge quite early.. They were used to working as a team with overlapping needs, and they felt there was a lack of co-operation that was making their jobs difficult.

The fact is that we were not ready for such a radical departure from the way football was managed in those days.

Although no one realised it at the time, we were again seeing culture at work. This time it was a clash of cultures. Charlie was new to the organisation and we probably should have done more to talk through the tensions that were building. Culture can be a building force but it can also be destructive.

Keith Rhind says that Charlie Gibson was very much a part of the old rugby league ethos. Penrith was developing a culture that was unique, and Gibson often found it hard to adapt. It started out well enough, but eventually the cracks began to appear as the management culture developing at Penrith came into conflict with the rugby league culture that had helped Gibson achieve success at South Sydney.

Tension between the club and rugby league was growing. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. The Gibson appointment would also create a bitter division within the board and ultimately destroy a long-standing friendship between the chairman and Cowan. It would also light the slow-burning fuse that culminated in Detective Sergeant Mick Howe’s raid on the club a few years later.

When the election was held in 1980 for the first joint board, John Hewett became chairman. He had held that position on the licensed club board for the previous ten years, and he and Cowan had become good friends and built a strong working relationship.

Rhind says that Gibson also developed a close relationship with Hewett, taking him to events and functions to meet the high-profile people in his rugby league circles. Hewett was enjoying the attention. Another director from those days describes him as ‘basking in the reflected glory’.

When a Kangaroo tour was coming up, Hewett told others on the board that Gibson was going to use his influence to take him on the tour. It seems likely that Hewett was pushing for this favour and Gibson was doing his best to accommodate him. But there was disquiet among other members of the board, and Gibson himself also appeared unhappy about it.

Looking back, it was a relatively minor issue. Yet it became one of those moments where personality, disappointment and misunderstanding combined to produce consequences far beyond the original dispute.

Hewett believed that he was about to be invited to join league heavyweights on a Kangaroo Tour², but that belief was against the designs of the heavyweights themselves. When it didn’t happen, Hewett was devastated and the conflict within the Board intensified. His disappointment, and the atmosphere of conflict on the board, caused him to resign as chairman in 1982. But his bitterness remained.

Deputy chairman Barry Hubbard, who was Hewett’s close friend, also resigned, leaving two vacancies on the board executive. Both men remained on the board. Keith Rhind, then deputy chairman, moved into the chairman’s role, which he held until the following AGM. At that meeting, Leo Armstrong was elected unopposed, and would become the club’s longest serving chairman.

Few could have known it at the time, but Armstrong would go on to become the longest-serving chairman in Panthers history and preside over some of the most significant years in the Club’s development.

Nevertheless the tensions that had been building were far from resolved — and the consequences were only just beginning to emerge.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

For more on Cowan’s experiences within the NSW Rugby League hierarchy, Removed Section in Beyond the Book – Rugby League’s Inner Circle. ↩︎
A Kangaroo Tour was regarded as a high honour and a prestigious experience for rugby league administrators during this era. ↩︎

← Part 19 · All Parts · Part 21 →

Commentary and Contributions

A Solution — Of Sorts

Part 19 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 7: The 16 Year Struggle to Streamline Rugby League

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Despite the promise shown in 1974, the underlying problems did not go away. Ashurst and Stephenson had settled in — the team had shown promise by reaching the finals of the Amco Cup and the budgeting and financial controls were in place. Cowan recommended that it was time for him to hand over to ex-player, Ron Workman.¹

The committee agreed and Cowan stepped aside to concentrate on the management of the licensed club.

The potential shown in 1974 was never realised. The first-grade team finished in the bottom four of the competition for most of the seventies.

Cowan’s growing frustration with a system that he considered wasteful, inefficient and noted only for a succession of failures fuelled his determination to convince both clubs of the advantages of a united effort.

If I analyse that history, I can see that the real cause of a lot of the internal problems through the seventies and early eighties was my unequivocal belief that Penrith would never achieve success as a rugby league competitor while it had separate administrations. I harped and nagged boards for ten years before I finally won the argument, and even then, the win was only because of the involvement of the NSWRL [New South Wales Rugby League] executive.

Later critics would portray Roger Cowan as a CEO surrounded by yes-men. The events of the 1970s suggest otherwise. They must have been either unaware of or had forgotten those years. It was an ongoing battle to achieve his ‘one board, one CEO’ ambition. He often thought he would never win. Neither side was willing to make the concessions necessary to bring the two together. Cowan laughs at the ‘yes-men’ tag.

For more than ten years, I did my very, very best – put my absolute best efforts into getting one board, one management. I kept going back, and going back, and it didn’t happen. So, no – they definitely weren’t yes-men.

One time in the late seventies, I was getting so frustrated, I thought I’m really going to make the effort here. I prepared a 19-page booklet for the next board meeting. It had graphs, and charts – every piece of information I could pull together to try and convince them. I was determined to make them see that “this is the only way this club is going to succeed”. I gave it to them a couple of weeks before the meeting to give them time to read it.

On the night of the board meeting, I made sure it was on the agenda. The item came up, and the deputy chairman, Murray Clarke, said: “I move that this document be received”. Somebody else said, “I second that”.

And that was it, there was no discussion, nothing – they just moved on to the next item! I blew my top, lost my temper completely.

It was really stupid putting a 19-page document before a board anyway – boards need concise documents. But I’d tried those for years and they hadn’t worked either.

It took me another couple of years, and a lot more frustrations to win that argument. And we haven’t looked back since. Many other clubs now operate the same way.

Cowan’s commitment to the cause was also used by his opponents to brand him as anti-rugby-league. This is one of the major Cowan myths, and it would be used against him many times by many people. It was also another factor that contributed to his appearance before Ian Temby in 2004. That one small trickle that began as a frustration with failure in rugby league in 1971 combined with some other small trickles along the way, became a raging torrent 33 years later.

Editor’s Note: Roger’s long campaign for “One Board, One CEO” was about far more than administrative structure. It reflected a deeply held belief about accountability, organisational unity and the future direction of Panthers. Readers seeking additional background may wish to read Why One Board, One CEO?

Barry Hubbard says that at one time, Cowan and the board executive even travelled down to the NSW rugby league office in Sydney to talk to Kevin Humphreys [then NSWRL president] to see if there was some way for the licensed club to take over the rugby league club. Hubbard was dead against the idea but still felt it should be explored. Humphreys told them in no uncertain terms that it was impossible. It was unconstitutional, and if they tried, they could be expelled from the game.

Local butcher and prominent cricketing identity, the late Trevor Wholohan OAM² interpreted Cowan’s trip to rugby league headquarters very differently. His opinion, expressed with his characteristic passion and vehemence, was aligned with those branding Cowan as anti-rugby-league. He declared with his characteristic passion and vehemence, that Cowan’s meeting with Humphreys was “to get rid of rugby league”.

Cowan’s reaction to this was disbelief. He wonders how any rational person could come to such a conclusion.

Imagine meeting with Kevin Humphreys to talk to him about getting rid of rugby league. Any sane, logical person would know that you wouldn’t do that. Humphries would chew you up and spit you out.

Hubbard said Cowan had returned from the meeting with Humphreys undaunted.

Roger was never one to take no for an answer. He had tunnel vision. He went back to the club and resolved to have a meeting with the football committee to decide on holding a joint election for a board that would have responsibility for both clubs.

In discussion, the football committee had agreed, in principle, to hold the election But when the actual motion was put to a vote, a division was called, and people were asked to vote by moving to opposite sides of the room. It was narrowly defeated. A couple of the committeemen who had agreed to an election now crossed the floor and voted against it.

The internal squabbling at Penrith – and the poor performance of the team – was becoming an embarrassment to rugby league administrators. The executive of the NSWRL offered to help, bringing in Alec Mackie, a highly respected rugby league administrator, who was chairman of St George and a vice president of the NSWRL. A committee – dubbed the Super Six³ – was set up to find a way forward, with three representatives from each board. Roger Cowan was also a part of the committee. Mackie chaired the meetings, which eventually concluded that there should only be one board at Penrith. The two committees, for the second time, came to an agreement.

When the joint election was held in 1980, the new board comprised all the directors of the licensed club. No-one from the football committee had been successful. It became the first board in rugby league history to handle the affairs of both a licensed club and a football club. However, it was only halfway towards the model that Cowan had been recommending.

I believed that a structure comprising one board employing two chief executives would be just as difficult as having two boards dealing with two chief executives.

In many ways it could even be worse. It missed the whole point of the recommendation.

When the boards came together, that is what they did. Rugby league was controlled through a newly appointed chief executive, Charlie Gibson, while I retained responsibility for the licensed club.

A promising coaching strategy for the 1974 season was derailed by a committee modifying it for the wrong reasons. It was years before its time and it might have been successful had it been given a chance. Here we were in 1980 and I had a feeling it was happening again. The system I had been advocating was being half introduced and again the modifications were for all the wrong reasons. You can’t half bake a cake.

And that was exactly the position the Club found itself in.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

Ron Workman is Panthers player number 13, a member of the 1967 foundation team, he retired as a player in 1973 after playing 93 1st Grade matches. In 1975 he was appointed as the Secretary of the Football Club, a role he held until 1978. ↩︎
Trevor Wholohan was a long-standing critic of Roger Cowan, with tensions between the two dating back to 1974 when Wholohan’s butchery supplied the Club. A dispute over an account led Wholohan to claim that Cowan had impugned his honesty. He later attended most sittings of the 2004 Temby Inquiry as an observer. ↩︎
The committee was in fact: Kevin Humphreys (NSWRL), Alec Mackie (NSWRL), John Jennings (Penrith Distric Club), Tom Ellis (Penrith District Club), John Hewett (Penrith Leagues Club) Rocky Davis (Penrith Leagues Club) — that’s the “Super Six” — and Roger Cowan. Keith Rhind (Penrith Legues Club) was on the bench for this team. ↩︎

← Part 18 · All Parts · Part 20 →

Commentary and Contributions

A Solution Kept Quiet

Part 18 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 7: The 16 Year Struggle to Streamline Rugby League

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Cowan continues with further thoughts on the bad decision to place Clare as head coach:

It was a ridiculous decision. Jack had some strange ideas about the strategies of the game and started clashing with the captain, Mick Stephenson. Mick was a passionate competitor and was quick to argue with Jack if he thought the coach was talking nonsense. Jack said he would take him out the back of the grandstand and sort him out.

My response was something like: “Jack, if you think the answer is to fight our captain, I want you to know that you will be doing it over my dead body”.

It was one of the many signs that we had made a bad decision.

This episode reinforced Cowan’s belief that Rugby League decision-making should be seated in one body, looking after the interests of the entire club.

Tom Wilson gives an example of the way the football committee worked at the time.

Les Boyd was a brilliant newcomer at the time, only a very young kid. The coaching committee had invited him and his father to come to the club to talk to us. His father was a little short stocky bloke. Les wasn’t much bigger, but he was a very strong looking, solid boy. And he had already started to make a name for himself.

We’re all standing around talking, and Pat Russell — who was on the football committee — is down at the end of the bar, holding court. He says to me, ‘Look Tom, look at the kid’s old man, the size of him. This kid will never grow up to be any decent sort of a footballer.

That’s what we were up against. Les Boyd did grow up, and he became an outstanding footballer — a mongrel, but a great footballer. It was only one man’s opinion, but that’s all it needed back then. It was like that all the time — how would the bloody schoolteachers know?

Appointing Jack Clare as head coach, the football committee cited Masters’ lack of first grade experience, saying he only had coached school football. In fact, his credentials were very similar to Jack Clare’s, but Masters had a far better CV.

So, the 1974 season began with Clare in the driving seat. Masters was to look after tactics, Harris coached the forwards, and Wilson the backs.

It soon became apparent that there was a problem, says Masters. The team lost its first four games and conceded a total of 107 points.

So on a wet Sunday at Warragamba, after a club family day up there, Roger gathered all four coaches in his car, and gave us an ultimatum. He said, “It’s obvious that this is not working, and I’m going to appoint Roy as head coach. You can accept it, or we go back to the board – who will no doubt go to the media, and wherever else it goes from there.

Cowan made it clear it was up to them — handle it quietly and confidentially or suffer the glare of media coverage and the uncertainty of how the committee would handle making a new decision.

For the remainder of the season, Harris became second grade coach, Wilson coached third grade and as far as the world knew, Clare was the head coach. None of us ever revealed to the press what the situation really was. We maintained that situation only to preserve Jack Clare’s dignity, but the reality was that I was first grade coach for that season.

The entire Penrith experience is one that Masters would prefer to forget. He felt very let down at the time.

My significant problem was that Roger … didn’t give me any support … I had to make my own arrangements … I just had to cop it sweet.

I thought that I had made a significant investment in a life change and ended up being dumped pretty much high and dry

In a recent exercise to select Penrith’s best team and coach of the past 40 years, Masters is named as the first-grade coach for 1974, but it’s taken 40 years to acknowledge it. Cowan told a meeting held in 2006 to discuss that 40-year team, that Panthers has treated Roy Masters abominably.

Masters speaks highly of Cowan,

I have a very great affection for Roger. But my admiration for him is based on what he’s done for the club since I left, not any problem that I had at the time with him.

See, you’ve got to be measured in this world – you just don’t define your personal history in terms of a couple of years you spent somewhere, and that forever influences your view of a person. You also make observations as you go down the track. And I can’t deny the fact that he, selflessly, with massive amounts of hard work, has built a vast empire.

Roger’s model introduced a revolutionary coaching plan It was a good model, but it was too far ahead of its time in terms of the politics that existed at the club in those times.

It didn’t matter what you tried to do with those people. If you came up with something new — like trying to develop match plans or produce videos — or had any kind of scientific training, you were completely alien. You belonged to a culture they didn’t like, and couldn’t accept. Yet look at the game now, it’s all scientific, all research and video analysis.

The politics during those days of two boards was treacherous … and it was very destructive and soul destroying. Merv Cartwright wasn’t on the committee at the time, but he was still a powerful force behind the scenes.

My experience at Penrith steeled me for the future.

In 1974, the year that Roy Masters came to Penrith, Mike Stephenson and Bill Ashurst also came — from England, to play with the team. Under the direction of Roy Masters, the team made the final of the new mid-week competition, the Amco Cup. They finished in ninth position in the first-grade competition, and had come close to making the semi-finals.

Although the team had its best yet success under Masters, he opted to remove himself from the politics and coach the Under 23 side the following year.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

← Part 17 · All Parts · Part 19 →

Commentary and Contributions

Innovation Stumbles Over Prejudice

Part 17 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 7: The 16 Year Struggle to Streamline Rugby League

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

From early in the 70s, Roger Cowan maintained an absolute commitment to the belief that rugby league would never succeed at Penrith while it was a separate entity. Cowan passionately believed that the secret of success was to integrate rugby league, uniting all the expertise within the management structure.

It took more than ten years to achieve that goal. Yet the struggle came with an unforeseen downside — the move to integrate had a negative impact on some relationships and reputations.

Cowan says there had been consistent failure under the two-committee system, and serious conflict.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had taken the easy path and simply kept out of rugby league. I am not sure that it would have been possible to do that and also protect the interests of the licensed club. In so many ways, the two are interdependent. But if I had found a way to do it, there is no chance whatsoever that the police would have walked through that door in 1985.

I know some very successful CEOs of large clubs who have kept right out of Rugby League. I think they were smarter than me. If Rugby League had been managed openly, honestly and effectively in the first few years there would have been no need for me to ever get involved. But I was never about to lead a team working for the success of the Registered Club and have it all blown away by irresponsible management of football.

As the club moved into the seventies, the licensed club continued its growth. But on the football side of things, the club was struggling

The results told the story.

The team’s best performance throughout the seventies was equal seventh in the 12-team competition, in 1971. It was second-last twice and had collected its first wooden spoon in 1973.

Something had to be done to improve performance and Cowan formed a small strategic sub-committee to focus on new strategies. The group included Cowan, Tom Wilson – who would become the club’s director of coaching the following year, Dave Podmore, a local businessman and Frank Ley, a schoolteacher who was also heavily involved in school rugby league. Podmore, Wilson and Ley were on the football committee.

The group devised a whole new concept of coaching.

The plan was to appoint a panel of coaches. The head coach would lead a team of specialist coaches – one for backs, one for forwards, and one skilled in tactics and strategy. The panel would oversee all three grades of football, and each would train the players in their specialty.

This was a new concept for Australian sport and structurally very different. There were similar systems used at the time in American football. Balmain coach Jack Gibson¹ had also spoken in support of such a coaching system, although he never actually used it. It is now in common use in all football codes.

The system was introduced in time for the 1974 season.

Roy Masters, who would become a prominent Sydney sports journalist², was part of that 1974 coaching panel. Barry Harris – a former state representative – was to be the forwards coach, and Wilson, already established as a coach, would oversee the backs. The fourth member of the team was Jack Clare. Clare was popular in the world of rugby league and seen as a ‘nice bloke’. He had been chairman of selectors with the Balmain club but had no experience coaching at grade level. He had coached high school teams and had only ever played five first grade matches.

Cowan and the strategy team wanted Masters as head coach. He had coached a number of successful school teams, notably the Australian schoolboys’ team that returned unbeaten from a tour of England in 1973.

Tom Wilson remembers that some of the group travelled to Tamworth to meet with Masters, who was teaching high school there at the time.

We spoke to Roy for 40 minutes on the sideline of a training session. We watched the session, and Masters didn’t say a thing to the team the whole time. They went through 43 moves – and dropped the ball once. What an efficient team!

Roy had developed a completely different way of doing things. It was a real management concept. We convinced him to leave Tamworth and come to Penrith to head up the new coaching panel.

But it would not prove that easy! Wilson continues,

When they got back and started to work on the new strategy, the old brigade came out fighting, “What would some schoolteachers and a couple of businessmen know about football?” The committee was prepared to go along with the new coaching concept but personality clashes within the committee caused a poor decision that derailed the strategy. The decision was later corrected by Cowan in quite extraordinary circumstances, but the strategy did not recover.

Masters says there were problems from the start.

The pervading culture on the football committee at that time was anti-intellectual. If you were a schoolteacher, you were gone from the start. There was one particular person on the board who really had it in for me. He was very vocal and wielded a lot of power.

There was something like 16 men on that committee, and most of them were the same.

It was never going to work. Frank Ley – who was a teacher – signed me. Roger, the club secretary, had also been a teacher, and here was I, another one. They just would not accept me. And it was all down to the prejudices of this unbelievably insidious committee.

It was even worse than that, says Cowan.

Frank Ley was unpopular with the committee, and he was seen by the committee as the driving force behind the appointment of Roy Masters, so the vote to appoint Jack Clare as the head coach was really a vote against Frank Ley. Personal prejudices easily won the battle over logical argument.

Headline SMH Herald 11 October 1973 – click image to read the article

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

Jack Gibson did not coach Balmain. In 1973 he coached Newtown and in 1974, he was in his second stint as coach of Eastern Suburbs. ↩︎
Roy Masters later became a prominent journalist and columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald and is now based in Melbourne. ↩︎

← Part 16 · All Parts · Part 18 →

Commentary and Contributions

The Think Tank Culture

Part 16 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 6: Building a Culture — By Accident and Design

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Focus groups — later formalised as Strategic Planning Groups — became a part of everyday life at Panthers. Glenn Matthews says the involvement of staff remains essential when Panthers considers major changes or redevelopment

Back in the early 70s, with a full-time staff numbering only 30, it already worked the same way. Kevin McGrath who started at Penrith Leagues a little after Roger Cowan, describes how it was then.

We used to have what they called think-ins or think-tanks. They started out once or twice a year, but pretty soon they were every three months. They would get groups of employees – someone from the bars, poker machines, a cleaner, an office person, one of the catering staff, and one of the directors – and put us all in a room together for a day. We had to sit there and come up with ideas that we thought could benefit the club. The ideas could be as weird and wonderful as we liked. Roger used to tell us the more way out, the better.

We had to work as a group, write the ideas down, throw them around, and come up with a list of a final few. Then they would pass the lists on to another similar group, to be discussed and modified again.

That’s an interesting comment, but is it true?

McGrath once jokingly told Cowan he was the biggest plagiarist of all time, because many of those ideas helped make the place what it is today. ‘But he was able to take those ideas and make them become reality.’

For example, one of McGrath’s suggestions was to make the front doors of the club a big open panther mouth – a la Luna Park. This went through the process and ended up as the scoreboard at Penrith Stadium.¹

Penrith Stadium’s iconic “Panther” Scoreboard – this was a later modified version.

Keith Rhind says,

Roger was always working on ways to stay ahead of what other clubs were doing. I’m sure he used to stay awake at night thinking up new ideas. He once bet me that one of the groups could come up with more than 200 suggestions in a day. I didn’t believe it was possible, but I lost the bet.

Cowan used to take people out of their comfort zones, Rhind says,

The main purpose of the think-tanks was to give the staff confidence in themselves. When Roger first started, there were a lot of problems, and staff morale was very low. We had a lot of internal pilfering and other bad practices, and there was no real structure or systems. These groups got the staff involved, they began to work as a team, and feel they were a part of something when they came to work. And we were getting all these ideas as well.

Kevin McGrath says it made him feel good to be part of those groups. ‘I was only a cellarman, but in those think-ins, I was equal to any of those blokes.’

In the 70s, Random Breath Testing was introduced to NSW. There was great apprehension about the effects it would have on businesses selling alcohol.

At Panthers, however, the legislation had positive effects. The Club’s “think tank” culture enabled it to come up with strategies that would take it to another level of growth.

Two managers went to Victoria, where RBT had been introduced five years earlier. They researched its effects in Victoria and what hotels had done about it. On their returned a think tank involving a number of key staff. It lasted several hours, and about 150 suggestions were listed. Once the list was complete, the more crazy ones were eliminated. The remainder were grouped and analysed.

Because of this one piece of legislation, the seeds were sown for Panthers to broaden its marketing focus. Now it would include family activities, tourism, and greater emphasis on food. The session was probably one of the two most valuable think tanks ever held by the Club.

The other, in 1983, drove the transformation of rugby league in Penrith from its lowest point to an era of success.

What began as informal ‘think-ins’ had become one of the defining engines of Panthers’ growth.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

The scoreboard became an iconic and much-loved feature of Penrith Stadium. It was removed in the early 2010s. For further context, see: https://pantherspassionpolitics.com/2026/06/02/the-iconic-panthers-scoreboard/. ↩︎

← Part 15 · All Parts · Part 17 →

Commentary and Contributions

Culture — Pivotal to this Story … and the Club

Part 15 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 6: Building a Culture — By Accident and Design

This article forms part of the serialised republication of Panthers, Passion & Politics – The Roger Cowan Years.

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Evidence given by some of the Footy Five at the Temby Inquiry – and carried through in newspaper stories at the time – suggested that Roger Cowan had a dictatorship mentality. Some Cowan critics interviewed for this book echo that view.

‘Cowan always had yes-men on the boards’, they said. ‘He was used to getting his own way and resented anyone who questioned his proposals or ideas’.

That’s an interesting comment, but is it true?

It was April 1984 when the Club finally moved to its new home. It walked out the doors of Station Street as the Penrith Leagues Club, and into Mulgoa Road as Panthers. It had taken almost thirteen years to create the physical part of the vision, but other foundations of the Panthers world were being laid all the time.

As soon as a new CEO takes over, a transition begins from the old culture to a new one. A lot of the culture of an organisation develops naturally from the interactions between people. Some of it is driven as a part of the strategic planning. Culture is the unique combination of stories, beliefs, myths and experiences within an organisation that influence how people treat each other and how they expect to be treated.

Every organisation has a culture.

By the late 80s the culture of Panthers became a management project as they searched for better ways to manage the dramatic growth that had occurred.

The words “corporate culture” came to many people’s notice in New South Wales at the time of the Police Royal Commission in 1994. Justice James Wood found that the NSW police culture had been carried through from the senior level to new recruits in an ever-spinning wheel over many years. Because of this, it had been almost impossible to wipe it out, though many had tried.

The Panthers story proves that the theory also works on the other side of that equation. Once the basic elements of a strong, positive culture exist, it too spreads through all levels of the organisation – from the board through management to new employees. The culture at Panthers was resilient and protected by everyone — it has also spread into the broader world of club-land with those who left Panthers.

Bryn Miller is now the CEO of Merrylands RSL Club in Sydney’s west. He worked at the Penrith club through the seventies and eighties, moving up through the structure. His responsibilities included poker machine promotions, entertainment, duty management and managing the new water ski park.

After 14 years in the job, he believed he was ready for another opportunity, but still looks back fondly on his experience at Panthers.

At Panthers we had a very strong team culture. In this ongoing environment of team bonding, you start to believe that there’s nothing outside Panthers. Other people who have moved on have said the same. For a long time afterwards, when you’re talking about Panthers, you still say ‘we’.

There was none of that feeling at other clubs where I worked. You went to work and you collected your pay. If you tried to be creative or do things differently, there was always somebody white-anting you, including the bosses above you. There was none of the structure or discipline that was normal practice at Panthers.

And it wasn’t that Roger went around ranting and raving. He trod quietly. I found some of the situations in those other clubs absolutely abhorrent. But it also taught me a lot.

People who come through Panthers are usually greeted with open arms when they apply for positions with other employers. The discipline that Miller spoke of, the ability to work as part of a team, the creativity, and the leadership skills make them an asset to any organisation.

Panthers’ amalgamations have been an extension of the whole process. Steve Van Zwieten is the General Manager of the Penrith site.¹ He said amalgamations have allowed the company to retain many good people they may well have lost.

When top management positions are limited, and people have that drive and ambition, they will move on. Amalgamations allowed us to hang on to those people. We can move them out into our smaller clubs, where they can continue their growth – realise their potential.

‘It worked the other way too. When we went into those new clubs, we found a lot of good people out there, but often they had had no leadership. As we started to work with them and educate them to our systems and culture, we found many that began to flourish. We had stars rising from all over the place.

‘Growing people is certainly one of our strengths’, says Glenn Matthews. ‘You’ve only got to look at the number of club general managers out there that came through this organisation.’

Around 25 CEOs of clubs in NSW spent their ‘formative’ career years at Panthers. One example is Thomas Paynter, who progressed from bar staff at Penrith to CEO of Port Macquarie Panthers. His story is explored in a companion Beyond the Book article.

That culture had its roots in the early days, when employees were encouraged to believe in the importance of their own contribution to success. Some of the earliest examples can be seen in a removed section from the original manuscript, Culture — An Early Instance at Panthers.

Cowan says there was a strong spirit of helping each other, with less emphasis on seniority or status.

Kevin McGrath tells the story of the first big Sunday night show in the auditorium.

‘It was Col Joye, and the staff was just not prepared for the numbers. People came from everywhere. There were no tickets, it was first come, first served, and total chaos. We sent down for more staff, but it was still not enough, so we called Roger. He raced down and said, “OK, what do you want me to do?” We put him behind the bar working the till. We were his boss that night.’

McGrath says he’s worked in a lot of places, and the boss always says to you, ‘My door is always open’. But when it comes to the crunch, he said, it seldom is.

Roger’s door was always open. I had eight kids, and all you got back then was your wages and endowment. I was always getting into financial trouble. Every time I needed bailing out till payday – or help to pay a bill – Roger would help me out.

Glenn Matthews joined the organisation in 1984, and he confirms that the ‘open door’ really always was an open door. And he says as group GM, he continues that policy. ‘Although it’s not really policy’, he says. ’It’s more than that – it’s a culture, a philosophy that seems to have always been there.’

Matthews says not everybody is going to be successful working for Cowan.

If you’re the sort of person who can give yourself your own pats on the back, you’re fine. But if you expected that Roger was going to pat you on the back, well, that just wasn’t going to happen. He supported and encouraged you and showed his faith in you by letting you go off on tangents, and try new things, so you knew you were OK. But that doesn’t work for everybody.

I thrived in that environment anyway; I always knew if I was doing a good job. If I gave something to Roger that he thought needed more work, or wasn’t quite right, he would give it back to me. He was always constructive, never really critical. And I took on board what he said for the next time.

Bryn Miller agrees that there were few actual ‘pats on the back’ from Cowan, but he says they weren’t really needed.

When we started bringing in the big acts, and it was all going so well, he would present the latest figures at a meeting and make the comparisons. We didn’t need him to come out and say, “good job, guys” because we knew. I now have quite a big staff of my own, and I know that some people do need that kind of reinforcement in their work, but it was never really Roger’s style.

Recognition, at Panthers, was often implicit — built into results, trust, and responsibility.

To receive new Parts and occasional project updates by email, you may subscribe below.

Readers who hold recollections, documents, or material relevant to this history are welcome to contribute via the Commentary & Contributions page.

Project Updates

Receive updates when new parts are published.

Steven van Zwieten left Panthers in September 2007. ↩︎

← Part 14 · All Parts · Part 16 →

Commentary and Contributions