Tag: Conflict

Building a Framework

Part 44 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 13: Amalgamations Not Takeovers

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

‘We are one club, with 14 sites.’

When Roger Cowan made that statement to Ian Temby, it reflected the philosophy that he had held since he first embraced the concept of amalgamations. It was another factor that helped to put him in that very courtroom on that day in June 2004.

The topic of amalgamations was first raised at Panthers in 1998 by John Wilson, who was then the Club’s gaming manager. The Registered Clubs Act had been amended to encourage the practice, and Wilson had come to believe there was a great opportunity there.1

For a number of reasons, the rate of club closures had been increasing, and the change to the law was aimed at slowing down the trend.

At management meetings Wilson continued to argue strongly for the concept. Eventually a model was developed that overcame most of the concerns and it was agreed that an amalgamation strategy should be recommended to the Board.

The board resolved to test the strategy with a small struggling club not far away from Penrith – the Hawkesbury Sporting Club in Richmond.  This first amalgamation would be a pilot for bigger things in the future.  It had some reasonable potential, although it would not deliver the level of benefits that we hoped to achieve in other amalgamations. 

It would help us learn more about what difficulties might lie ahead and to develop systems to overcome them.  We believed that we could easily turn the club around, by introducing our management systems and by taking advantage of our purchasing power.

We would support them in every way needed, but our model provided that they would always be able to retain their identity and a strong sense of ownership of the club. This would, in turn, encourage a strong commitment to service their local members

When a business is considering something as important as this, the focus has to be on the desired outcomes rather than what has to be done. Management decided on a set of outcomes for the future that show us our amalgamation strategy had been successful. We needed agreement between Board and management on that future picture, and it was extraordinarily difficult to achieve. The failure to reach agreement delayed the start of the strategy for nearly twelve months. 

On the one hand, we could look upon each amalgamation as the formation of a new entity in which all stakeholders would have equal rights.  In the alternative picture, one club is in the centre, having the power and control over all its subsidiaries.  The first model is a true amalgamation.  The second example is effectively a takeover. 

The management of Panthers always believed the first model would be the pathway to success, whereas the takeover path would eventually create limits and barriers.  We believed that we finally had an agreement with the Board on the vision when we submitted a detailed list of the criteria that would be used to qualify clubs under consideration. Everything seemed to be covered and it was discussed to death before the Board gave it the final approval.

The word ‘takeover’ does appear in some early documents, but from day one, Cowan’s original concept was of amalgamation.2 Later, some of the Five would claim that they thought they were agreeing to takeovers, not amalgamations, and that they had been misled by management.

Barry Walsh was chairman of the board when management first floated the amalgamation idea. He says they discussed the concept for more than a year, but there were problems convincing some directors. ‘I saw a number of benefits’, says Walsh.

The outcomes described by management sounded plausible, achievable and worthwhile. We were given a lot of information, and it was obvious to me that they had gone into an extensive research and analysis process. I could see the benefits of spreading our brand into other areas of the state, developing a larger rugby league following, and building assets and cash flow. Because of the financial situations of these clubs, we could get them at very good rates.

While documenting the benefits of amalgamation, the management recommendation put to the Board also highlighted one of the negatives. It would open the possibility that members of another club could nominate for the Board. At the time, this was not seen as an immediate problem, because it was thought they would have to be members for three years before they could stand.

Nevertheless, the prospect that members of an amalgamated club could stand for the Board, even after three years, raised the concerns of some board members to the extent that they simply could not reach agreement. The spectre of ‘reverse takeover’ had entered the picture.

The boardroom delays on the Hawkesbury proposal became very frustrating for management. They tried to explain that amalgamations could help the club to overcome some of the problems it was currently facing in a changing local market.

The threats it faced included over-capitalisation on one site, and the maturity of the local gaming market. Hotels and other clubs were continually improving. In previous years it had been commonplace for bus companies to bring tourists to Panthers from other areas such as Manly, Wollongong and country NSW. The improvement in club facilities in other areas had weakened that business.

Another threat was the attitude of the state government towards clubs, and the associated rumours of higher taxes and restrictive legislation.

There was also the danger of being dependent on one business, in one location, which was already suffering under the strains of its size.

At one Board meeting called specifically to consider whether to adopt an amalgamation strategy, the discussion circled laboriously for nearly four hours. Cowan says the final hour could have been completely eliminated had there been a recording of the first hour. After all that time, the only resolution was that management should prepare further documentation to prove that the threats actually existed. 

A frustrated management team came to the conclusion that the entire exercise had been a deliberate waste of time, and that the request for more information was just an excuse to put off making a decision. Deferring a decision was easier than raising logical argument.

To the management team, the threats were very real – and very obvious. They also should have been obvious to the Board. But how could it be proven that the government attitude, for example, was a threat? Today every club in the state would agree that it was the greatest threat of all.3

A major benefit of amalgamation would be the spreading of support for the rugby league team. That, in turn, would boost opportunities in sponsorship, merchandising and television. With the advent of Pay TV, management considered television exposure as a crucial part of its future success, particularly with the possibility of clubs being rewarded through their popularity on that medium. 

Another important consideration was the potential to spread many of the fixed overhead costs over a number of sites, without extra cost. Financial management, poker machine management and purchasing were just some of these.

Many of the clubs seeking to amalgamate had assets far more valuable than their liabilities, which would have a positive effect on the Club’s balance sheet. This could lay the foundation for future expansion into other profitable areas, and most importantly, it could be a way for Panthers to begin to break its dependency on gaming.

Former director Bateman, one of the Five who often spoke out against the amalgamation strategy, told the Temby Inquiry in 2004,

My initial attitude in regards to amalgamations was that we needed to explore it. I accepted there were pressures on our main source of revenue being gaming, and we needed to spread our wings.

He told Ian Temby – that ‘amalgamations were an appropriate way in which to extend outside our current Penrith base’.

Part of the management recommendation was a set of criteria for clubs wishing to amalgamate with Panthers. After 12 months, the Board agreed that an amalgamation strategy should become high priority. At that time, management was given authority to identify and pursue amalgamation possibilities.

The Board stipulated that every amalgamation must meet the criteria. Even then, there was no authority granted for amalgamations to proceed automatically. Each one had to be recommended and approved separately by the Board. Generally, a board sets policy, defines parameters and leaves management to work towards success within those parameters. In this case the Board put each new proposal under the microscope.

Although there was a lot of discussion about members of amalgamating clubs being able to stand for the Board, nothing was built into the criteria to provide against it. John Ralston4, an acknowledged legal expert in the club industry, had advised that it would be highly unlikely that the licensing court would approve an amalgamation unless the members of both clubs were treated equitably. He also reminded the Club that the Registered Clubs Act requires that at least 50% of members had to have the right to vote for the Board.

Management breathed a sigh of relief when it appeared that the five directors had finally agreed to a strategy that ensured all members be treated equally after amalgamation. At long last, it seemed they understood that the amalgamation strategy could only be successful if Panthers protected the rights of the members of the amalgamating club. Such beliefs by management were to prove naïve.

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.

  1. The regulatory framework under the Registered Clubs Act increasingly recognised amalgamation as a means of dealing with clubs facing financial or operational difficulty. The Act provided for amalgamations subject to approval by club members and the licensing authority, with the Licensing Court supervising the amalgamation process and the transfer of the relevant club licence. The statutory framework governing amalgamations was subsequently expanded substantially in 2001.
    ↩︎
  2. The terminology used in some early documentation was not always consistent. The distinction being drawn here is between the use of the word takeover and the model advocated by Cowan, under which amalgamating clubs would retain identity and local involvement and their members would ultimately share rights within the wider Panthers organisation.
    ↩︎
  3. “Today” refers to the time of writing of the original manuscript in 2007.
    ↩︎
  4. John Ralston BA LLB (Sydney University) was admitted to legal practice in 1975 and is today a consultant with Pigott Stinson. For more than 30 years he has acted extensively for registered clubs and practised across the wide scope of law affecting clubs and the club industry. Pigott Stinson describes him as one of the leading legal practitioners in the club industry. ↩︎

← Part 43 · All Parts · Part 45→

Commentary and Contributions

Tapping the Unconcious — Anti-Rugby-League?

Part 43 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 12: The Anti-Football Myth

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

The anti-rugby-league tag is the one that angers Cowan most. It was such a ridiculous claim; he says.

I fought for years to bring about a more streamlined administration of Rugby League despite the conflict, and the criticism that I was bringing down on myself. The results speak for themselves.  I was single minded about the need to run a profitable club. If we had spent all our money on football in the seventies, we would not have grown from that very tiny base to one that continues to compete at the top level. Whenever the football club was in crisis I stepped in and did both jobs.

Panthers’ group chairman Barry Walsh worked with Cowan for most of those forty years. He says that on a number of occasions when the team was going through a series of losses and nothing seemed to be working for the coach, Cowan assisted with player motivation. He adds that only very few people ever knew of Cowan’s involvement at that level.

It involved many hours of preparation and attendance at every game. On many occasions he was providing weekly counselling sessions for individual players who had specific problems affecting their performances.

Cowan recalls:

One of my greatest interests for many years has been the power of the unconscious to affect performance. There are many ways of tapping into that power. Meditation, yoga, hypnosis and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) are all examples and the benefit different people in different ways. I found that a sequence of losses could always be altered by changing patterns of thinking. The majority of athletes, even in losing teams, respond to some of the techniques. I also discovered some of the pitfalls of trying too much.

I only ever offered help after the team had suffered a string of defeats, and on every occasion, there was a turnaround at the very next game. Every time. There was no personal gain – my only motive was to help the team perform better and assist the coach.

My critics say that I would not pay the cost of having a good team. Yet some of them held a majority on the board and made the policy decisions. They never suggested any changes to the budgets for rugby league. When a coach was going through a tough time some of them held secret meetings with players. This brought bad publicity and further demoralised a coach who already had enough problems.

Supporting Rugby League goes far beyond cheering the team from free seats in the grandstand or a private box, rubbing shoulders with the stars of the game, grandstanding at annual meetings, and enjoying spectacular Rugby League events as an invited guest. Directors – and the patron of the club – held that privileged position. It was always disappointing to me that Ron Mulock did not appreciate it to the extent that he would at least accept an invitation from the Chairman to settle his differences quietly and privately in the Boardroom, rather than with very public criticisms.

The reader might be just a little puzzled at this stage about who was really anti-rugby-league – it always puzzled me.

BEYOND THE BOOK
Phil Gould remembers Roger putting these ideas into practice with the Panthers in 1978.
The Mental Game — Roger, Gus and an Idea Ahead of Its Time

If Cowan really had been anti-rugby-league, he could have saved himself a lot of anguish by leaving the hard decisions to others. He could have left the stress that goes with changing coaches and staff, running workshops, writing recommendations and fighting for a united administration to others, and kept right out of it. It is difficult to criticise someone for doing nothing.

It wasn’t as if there weren’t other things to think about. The Club was embarking on a brand-new path – to amalgamate with other clubs. Although totally unrelated to football, this new strategy would be used by some to feed the fires of the anti-rugby-league myth.

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 42 · All Parts · Part 44→

Commentary and Contributions

The Foundations of Myth

Part 38 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 12: The Anti-Football Myth

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

In the aftermath of Mulock’s advertisement1, a mythology built around a distorted version of events began to take hold in Penrith. It was strongest perhaps among readers of the Western Weekender, but by word of mouth it spread widely. People came to believe that four of the nine Panthers directors had voted for a merger with Parramatta, even though no such vote had been taken.

One of the four was Barry Walsh who says:

I made it clear from the start that there was no way I would ever vote for a merger with Parramatta. But we had to investigate it. We were in trouble; we could have lost our team completely. We had a duty as directors to look at the position and investigate the options and the opportunities.

In 2002, the five directors who had opposed signing the letter placed another full-page ad in the Weekender. Again, it referred to the merger, and the ‘vote’ on it. In part it reads:

On 31 July 1999 a special board meeting was held at Roger Cowan’s request at which he tabled a written submission by the Penrith and Parramatta clubs to the NRL requesting the NRL’s approval for a joint venture of the two clubs for participation in the NRL competition from 2000.

It notes that the document had been signed by the Parramatta CEO.

The vote taken in July 1999 was not a vote on whether to merge, but on whether to sign and send the letter to the NRL.

The assertion was that the document was a submission for a joint venture between the two clubs — a description that did not accurately reflect what the letter said. The letter sought the NRL’s approval for Penrith and Parramatta to continue discussions about a possible joint venture, while expressly stating that neither club was under any obligation to proceed.

The ad did not mention that the letter clearly spelled out that there was no obligation to merge.

The ad was run as part of the Five’s campaign for the October 2002 election for the Board of Directors2. Cowan says it followed their controversial “Board Wars” front page headline in the newspaper a week earlier.

For Cowan, the advertisement was more than simply an inaccurate account of what had occurred. He saw it as part of a deliberate attempt to portray him and the other three directors as being prepared to sacrifice Penrith’s independence:

By this time, I had seen plenty of behaviour from these directors that should have prepared me for this, but it still surprised me a bit. Here in print was the evidence that they were prepared to stretch the facts in order to take over the Board of the Club3. If the ticket they ran at that election had been successful, the Board would have contained the so-called Footy Five, and two other affiliates of Greg Evans.

Ron Mulock ran his own separate ad at the time of that election. What surprised me most was that a well-known local solicitor, a prominent local newspaper owner and businessman, and a high-profile Labor politician – who was also the club patron – would put their name to ads that were obviously designed to mislead the Club’s members and the public. The participation of the other three did not surprise me.

Particularly damaging were some misleading statements in the Footy Five ad.

Readers would be left with the impression that I had signed away the club and that they had saved it. Also untrue was that four directors had voted to merge with Parramatta.

The belief that Roger Cowan signed a document to merge, and that without the actions of these five people and Ron Mulock, there would be a team called the Parramatta Panthers in the competition – remains with many in the Penrith community to this day. A number of long-time Panthers supporters interviewed for this book were definitely under this belief.

Roger Cowan says that the merger saga solidified the anti-football perceptions that he believes started many years earlier.

In the mid-1960s, Penrith won a place in the first division competition, but Cowan was continually frustrated by the football committee’s inability to stay within budget. The tensions between the two administrations eventually contributed to the removal of district club secretary Merv Cartwright4.

As a player I had been quite friendly with Merv and supported him.

Once we were both in administrative positions, we came into conflict. We did not work well together as secretary and treasurer.

He was on the registered club committee when I offered to manage the Club on the three-month trial. He spoke against it. The committee accepted the offer and Cartwright was furious.

After the meeting I went down to help behind the bar and he followed me, abusing me all the way.

“What a hide I had to take on such a role without previous club management experience”, he said. “What would a schoolteacher know about running a club?”

When promotion to first division was raised, I supported it totally. The bad blood that existed between Cartwright and me was never a factor. I was excited by the prospect.

Penrith 1st Grade circa 1959 — Cartwright and Cowan are teammates. (photo courtesy of David Ellks)
Back row: Gordon Roberts (2nd from left), Don Ellks (centre), Merv Cartwright (4th from right), Noel ‘Doc’ East (far right).
Middle row: Roger Cowan (far left), Leo Trevena (centre)
If you can help identify any others please contact admin@pantherspassionpolitics.com

Cowan had realised that promotion to the top level would be made much more difficult while it was struggling financially. He and some of his team were working seven days a week to turn the registered club around.

The rugby league competition was very different in the 60s. It was Sydney-based, most players were employed in other jobs, and it did not require the kind of money it does today to participate. A small club could aspire to do it – provided it was run efficiently. But Penrith was by far the smallest, by every measure — licensed club turnover, profitability, membership, football operations, financial resources and assets. Even Newtown was larger. St George, Norths, Easts, Balmain were all giants in comparison. Cowan realised it was going to be difficult to compete with them in rugby league without significant financial gains.

Up until that time I doubt if anyone could have said that I was anything other than a committed rugby league supporter for Penrith. However, reputations are often built on rumour rather than fact, and I had made a ferocious enemy.

Cartwright was well known in the district and had built his own reputation as a rugby league man through and through. Considering our conflict, it is unlikely that he would have been singing my praises around the junior league and other league circles.

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.

  1. This refers to the advertisment run in the Western Weekender in 1999. You can read it in full in A Campaign of Letters, a PDF archive of public dispute of late 1999.
    ↩︎
  2. By this time the Penrith Panthers had already competed in three NRL seasons — the prospect of being excluded no longer existed, there was no danger, no prospect, no thought of mergers.
    ↩︎
  3. The five directors signing this ad would contend their aim was to protect the Penrith club.
    ↩︎
  4. The treasurer at the time, Ron Partridge, also lost his position. See Beyond the Book — Removing the Football Club and Treasurer ↩︎

← Part 37 · All Parts · Part 39 →

Commentary and Contributions

The Footy Five — A Name That Rewrote the Story

Throughout Panthers, Passion & Politics, five Panthers directors — John Bateman, Greg Evans, Craig Terry, Geoff James and Denis Coffey — are frequently referred to as the Footy Five.

It is a useful description — maybe too useful.

The five directors became linked during a period of increasing disagreement within the Panthers Board. The first public indication of a division came with Ron Mulock’s press release of 6 September 1999.1 Even then, however, neither the directors involved nor any particular grouping of them was publicly identified.

The name Footy Five would not be applied until more than two years later.

The position was more complicated.

The stand-alone issue placed these five directors on the same side of an important disagreement. All directors wanted Panthers to remain independently represented in the highest level of rugby league.

The different “sides” developed well after the 1998 Information Night.2 The division was about whether Panthers should continue investigating possible amalgamation arrangements as protection against the possibility that remaining independent might ultimately prove impossible.

But the five agreeing on that issue did not mean agreement on everything else, nor necessarily the existence of the later faction.

As John Bateman recalled in his January 2007 correspondence with Jennie Bentley:

Any real unison between ourselves [the group eventually labelled “Footy Five”] emerged much later during the period March-September 2002 when the Board was facing major problems associated with licenced club amalgamations.

By then, the differences within the Board had become much more visible.3

And the name that emerged was extraordinarily effective.

More Than a Name

At its simplest, Footy Five identified five directors and reflected their particular concern for the interests of the football club.

Political labels are rarely quite that simple.

To start, calling one group the Footy Five inevitably also labelled the other four directors. If these five directors represented football, where did that leave the other directors?

It helped reduce complicated disagreements over governance and the future direction of Panthers to a simple binary proposition:

one side was for football; the other side was not

That distinction was powerful.

It was also an oversimplification.

Perhaps that should not be surprising. The term was created by Ron Mulock, someone with considerable experience in politics and political campaigning, and it framed the approaching board election with considerable effectiveness.

Yet the issues then dividing the Board were complex. They involved club amalgamations, governance, members’ rights and benefits, commitments made to members of amalgamating clubs and, ultimately, competing views about the direction Panthers was taking.

For some of the Footy Five, however, these issues were connected to football.

Their fear was that the club amalgamations might eventually produce a “reverse takeover” of Panthers. A changed membership and governance structure, they believed, could reopen the possibility of a football merger. Some went further, suspecting that management itself might be orchestrating such an outcome.

Whether those fears were justified belongs to the later story. What matters here is that, by the time the Footy Five name emerged, trust between management and the majority of the Board had substantially eroded.

The disagreements were real. So too were differences in philosophy and priorities.

But the suggestion that one group cared about football while the other did not was precisely the characterisation challenged throughout Jennie Bentley’s original manuscript.

All wanted Panthers to survive as a stand-alone club.

One view was that the organisation should concentrate its resources and energy on achieving the stand-alone objective. The other was that prudent management also required investigation and preparation of alternatives that everyone hoped would never be needed.

That is a much more subtle proposition than pro-football versus anti-football.

Looking Back Through a Later Label

There is another consequence of the effectiveness of the Footy Five name.

It stuck!

Once the five directors became identified in that way, the term was a convenient shorthand for describing them — including when looking backwards at events that had occurred before the name existed.

Panthers, Passion & Politics does this too.

The original manuscript regularly refers to the Footy Five while describing earlier events. This can create the impression that the grouping, the name and the political division it came to represent already existed in their later form.

It is an impression needing some qualification.

The five directors were there. They sometimes shared positions on important issues. And their relationships and influence upon one another were developing. Those earlier disagreements became part of the history that eventually produced the later Board division.

But they were not yet publicly — or privately — defined as the Footy Five.

Describing the five directors in an earlier dispute as the Footy Five makes it very tempting to interpret that dispute through the lens of what came later: football against business, football supporters against their opponents, or ultimately the Footy Five against people supposedly less committed to the game.

It is also easy to fall into the trap of believing there was a dispute over standing alone — there was not!

The contemporary story was more complicated.

The Power of Retrospect

This is one of the difficulties of telling history.

Later events give names and meanings to things that may have appeared quite differently to those experiencing them at the time.

A memorable label makes a complicated story easier to tell. Eventually it can become so familiar that it seems always to have existed.

And The Footy Five is undoubtedly a memorable label.

Its effectiveness can perhaps be measured by the fact that the terminology was eventually adopted retrospectively in the original account of these events — and subsequently in this project.

For Panthers, Passion & Politics, that requires a small but important editorial correction.

Where the term Footy Five is used in connection with events preceding the later Board conflict and election, it should generally be understood as retrospective shorthand for the five directors who later became known as the Footy Five.

It simply avoids allowing a highly effective later political label to define an earlier debate more neatly than the evidence warrants.

And in a story so often concerned with the power of perception, language and public narrative, that distinction seems particularly worth making.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Conflict · Footy Five

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.

  1. See Beyond the Book — Resurrecting the Merger Debate ↩︎
  2. See Part 34 — An Information Night — Weaponised ↩︎
  3. Roger Cowan believed the faction — later labelled Footy Five — was well defined by late 1999 when they forced Leo Armstrong to relinquish his long-held position as chairman. ↩︎

Major Player: John Bateman

John Bateman OAM
Photo: Western Weekender 2018

John Gerard Bateman OAM

Solicitor; Penrith City Councillor and Mayor; Panthers Director; Member of the “Footy Five”

John Bateman was a highly prominent public figure in Penrith during the 1990s and early 2000s. A respected solicitor, local government leader and long-serving councillor, he combined legal expertise with extensive community and political experience. His appointment to the Panthers Board reflected both his professional standing and the growing stature of Panthers as one of Western Sydney’s largest and most influential organisations.

Within Panthers, Passion & Politics, Bateman emerges as one of the principal figures in the governance conflicts that reshaped the organisation during the closing years of Roger Cowan’s administration. Initially appointed to strengthen the Board, he later became one of the leading advocates of an alternative direction for Panthers during the Super League era, the merger debates and the internal disputes that followed.

Role in the Narrative

John Bateman’s involvement in the narrative spans much of the conflict that dominates the latter half of Panthers, Passion & Politics.

Appointed to the Panthers Board in the mid-1990s, he entered the organisation at a time when Panthers had grown from a successful licensed club into one of the largest community organisations in New South Wales. Board membership had become both influential and prestigious, attracting individuals whose professional experience and public standing could contribute to the increasingly complex governance of the organisation

Bateman quickly became an influential director. During the Super League conflict and the subsequent National Rugby League rationalisation process, he emerged as one of the strongest advocates for Panthers pursuing a stand-alone future rather than preparing contingency plans involving merger discussions. He became closely associated with the group of directors later known as the “Footy Five.”

As disagreements between management and sections of the Board intensified, Bateman became one of the central figures in debates surrounding merger negotiations, governance, Board authority and the future direction of Panthers — in particular the governance arrangements associated with Panthers’ club amalgamations. He was a prominent witness in the Temby Inquiry and he categorically denies playing any part in its calling. Bateman in one of the most significant individuals in the later chapters of this story.

Background

Profession: Solicitor

John Bateman established a legal practice in Penrith that became one of the region’s best-known firms. Admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, he built a reputation in both legal practice and community leadership, later becoming a founding partner of Bateman Battersby Lawyers.

Community Leadership:

Bateman’s public life extended well beyond the legal profession. He served for many years as a Penrith City Councillor, Deputy Mayor (1997–98) and Mayor of Penrith (1998–2000), leading the city during preparations for and staging of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, when Penrith hosted rowing and canoe/kayak events.

His community involvement also included service with the Nepean Medical Research Foundation, the Penrith Valley Economic Development Corporation, the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, the Penrith Olympic Torch Relay Committee and numerous sporting and community organisations. He also served on the boards of Panthers, Penrith Rugby Club and the Western Sydney Academy of Sport, reflecting his long-standing commitment to the Penrith region.

Honours:
• Australian Sports Medal (2000)
• Centenary Medal (2001)
• Penrith Citizen of the Year (2008)
• Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) (2018)
• Western Sydney University Community Fellow (2019)
• Honoured Citizen of the City of Penrith (2022)

Appointment to the Panthers Board of Directors:

By the mid-1990s Panthers had become the largest licensed club in New South Wales, one of the largest employers in Western Sydney and one of the region’s most influential organisations. An appointment to the Panthers Board had become one of the most prestigious voluntary positions in the Penrith region, reflecting the organisation’s extraordinary growth and influence.

Bateman was appointed to fill a casual vacancy on the Panthers Board rather than being elected by members. Board appointments increasingly reflected the need for professional expertise alongside traditional community representation. His appointment reflected the confidence directors placed in his legal expertise, political experience and public profile. He also had longstanding interests in sport and established relationships with several existing directors.

Bateman therefore arrived at Panthers not as an unknown community volunteer, but as one of the region’s best-known civic and professional leaders. The Board regarded his appointment as strengthening its capacity to deal with the increasingly complex strategic challenges confronting Panthers.

John Bateman was appointed because he was exactly the sort of director Panthers needed — and the appointment was exactly the sort of position Bateman desired.

Relevance to Events Described

John Bateman’s importance to Panthers, Passion & Politics lies not simply in the positions he held, but in the influence he exercised during one of the most turbulent periods in the club’s history.

During the Super League conflict he became a leading advocate for the view that Panthers should focus on remaining an independent club rather than pursue merger negotiations with another organisation. Although management regarded merger discussions as prudent contingency planning in response to an uncertain future, Bateman believed that even a non-binding declaration of intent could ultimately place Panthers on a path towards losing its independence.

His position reflected a fundamentally different assessment of the risks facing the club.

As the governance conflict deepened, Bateman became one of the most influential members of the group that became known as the “Footy Five.” Together they challenged aspects of the existing governance structure and increasingly opposed Roger Cowan’s leadership on several major issues.

Roger Cowan initially regarded Bateman as a valuable addition to the Board. Over time, however, their relationship deteriorated as their views on governance, strategic planning and the future direction of Panthers diverged. In later reflections Cowan came to believe that Bateman’s growing public profile and political ambitions influenced some of his decisions within Panthers. That interpretation forms part of Cowan’s perspective presented throughout this work rather than an established historical fact.

Bateman was also a key player in disputes centred on the governance of clubs amalgamating with Panthers and the subsequent Temby Inquiry making him one of the most consequential participants in the latter stages of the narrative.

Legacy

John Bateman’s contribution to Penrith extends beyond his involvement with Panthers. As a solicitor, councillor and Mayor, he played an important role in the civic development of the city and was widely recognised for his commitment to the local community.

Within Panthers, however, his legacy is inseparable from one of the organisation’s most divisive periods.

Some sections of the Penrith community regarded him as an independent director prepared to challenge existing leadership and defend the club’s independence during an uncertain period for rugby league. Others saw him as one of the principal figures behind governance disputes that consumed the organisation during the closing years of Roger Cowan’s administration.

Whatever view readers ultimately take, John Bateman’s influence on the events described in Panthers, Passion & Politics was substantial. His decisions, alliances and leadership helped shape the governance conflicts that defined a critical chapter in Panthers’ history.

Sources used to prepare this profile: Advocacy Australia Website; Bateman Battersby Website;

Related Topics

Related Themes:

Football Club · Conflict · Board Decisions · Governance

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.

Editorial Note

This profile is presented as contextual background.
Additional material may be introduced as the narrative progresses.

Resurrecting the Merger Debate.

By the end of July 1999, many believed the public debate over a possible joint venture between Penrith and Parramatta had finally run its course.

On 31 July, the Panthers Board rejected the National Rugby League’s invitation to lodge a non-binding joint venture submission. Although such a submission would not have committed Panthers to a merger, it would have extended the deadline and preserved Panthers’ access to the substantial financial incentives being offered by the NRL. By declining the invitation, the Board effectively closed that avenue.

This decision did not remove the uncertainty surrounding Panthers’ future. At that stage the club still faced the possibility of exclusion from the reduced national competition. Questions about the club’s long-term future therefore remained unresolved, even though the merger proposal itself appeared to have been settled.

Five weeks later, the issue unexpectedly returned to the public arena.

On 6 September 1999, former Panthers Patron Ron Mulock issued a press release predicting that another attempt would soon be made to pursue a merger with Parramatta. The statement prompted General Manager Roger Cowan to write directly to Panthers sponsors, responding to a number of Mulock’s claims and explaining both the Board’s position and the reasons behind his earlier recommendation that merger options should be investigated.

The exchange did not end there. Ron Mulock subsequently published a full-page paid advertisement in the Western Weekender and later circulated a detailed response to Roger Cowan’s letter. Together, these documents provide a revealing insight into how the debate was conducted during one of the final stages of the merger controversy.

More importantly, they demonstrate that although the Board had made its decision, there remained a significant difference in management philosophy. While the objective of remaining a stand-alone club was widely shared, opinion differed over whether responsible governance required contingency planning for adverse outcomes or an exclusive focus on achieving the preferred result.

The community’s favoured position was well-known but the atmosphere had quieted after the July 31st confirmation.

Rather than allowing the issue to fade from public view, the correspondence starting with the Mulock Press Release of 6th Spetember reignited debate at a time when the club’s future was still uncertain.

The accompanying Digital Archive — A Campaign of Letters reproduces these documents in chronological order as contemporary source material. They are presented without alteration, allowing readers to examine the original correspondence and advertisements and draw their own conclusions.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Conflict · Footy Five

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 Myth of the Footy Five

Part 37 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 11: A Strange Response to a Lifeline

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Few Board decisions carried greater significance than the one made late in July 1999. Panthers’ place in the national competition may have depended upon it. It was life or death in rugby league, says Cowan

Panthers losing its place in the NRL competition would have been a disaster, yet here we have a board refusing to talk about it, and refusing to sign something that would have given the club more time.

Sometimes I would have daydreams about the Footy Five attitude1. I imagined them deciding to dive into a pool from the high tower. They would climb to the top, look down and discover that all the water had drained out of the pool. This was new information. But they had already made a decision, and why would they change it just because of new information? So they had dived anyway. As they plummeted downwards, they were studying a book entitled Corporate Governance. It was open at the chapter about considering all the available information and making decisions in the best interests of the organisation.

There was only one downside to signing that letter. Extending the deadline would have allowed the media to continue its speculations, and this, in turn, would have continued to foster divisions in community attitude.

If it had been signed, it is certain that the subject would have been raised again in Penrith Council, perhaps with some questions to Bateman and aspiring councillor Evans, who had previously served and was known to many on council.2

If it had been signed, there would have been no Footy Five campaign, no full-page ads from Ron Mulock attacking Cowan and the other four directors. And there would never have been what Cowan regarded as the biggest myth of all — that the Footy Five and Mulock had saved the Panthers.

There would never have been a ‘Board Wars’ story on the front-page of the Western Weekender. And the Footy Five may never have lost their seats on the Board.

Panthers Board, management, and staff – including the Five themselves – would have avoided much pain.

It is also likely that Panthers would have been spared the enormous costs – in money, time, spirit and lost business – of the Temby inquiry. The NSW government might have been spared a useless exercise which cost it millions of dollars, and the respect of the club industry.

It never occurred to Cowan that there could have been any misunderstanding about the non-binding nature of the document.

Despite all the encouragement I had given the management team trying to have open minds and think creatively, and my own understanding of the powerful impact paradigms can have, it never entered my mind that anyone could fail to understand. I tried so hard to explain it. The document itself seemed so plain.

In September 1999, Ron Mulock sought to publish a full-page advertisement in two local newspapers. It supported his position on the merger situation and was highly critical of Cowan. The Penrith Press declined to run the ad, saying they considered it defamatory. The Western Weekender ran it. 

The ad described a document that had ‘fallen off the back of a truck’ to come into his hands. It was a copy of the letter to NRL chairman Malcolm Noad, signed by Denis Fitzgerald – and with a space for Roger Cowan’s signature. The Mulock ad quotes from the document:

‘This submission creates no obligation on our clubs to conclude the joint venture’.

The ad also noted the document to be confidential.

Editor’s Note: Following the Board’s July 1999 decision, the merger issue unexpectedly returned to public debate — the full-page advertisment mentioned here was not what sparked the return, three weeks earlier a press release lit the fire. The Historical Context article — Resurrecting the Merger Debate — examines the exchange of letters and public statements between Roger Cowan and Ron Mulock and links to the Digital Archive containing the original documents.

So, how did this confidential document get from the Panthers boardroom into his hands?

Greg Evans told the Inquiry there had been a split in the Board between those who didn’t want to merge at any cost, and those that were willing to accept the merger. Ian Temby asked if ‘the former group would have rather seen the Panthers cease to compete in the top competition than merge?’

Evans answers: ‘I can’t speak for them, but I probably would have.’

Yet the theme that resounds through Evans’ evidence is his passion for rugby league. This, he claims, first prompted him to stand for the board, and to lobby board members when vacancies became available. Yet his evidence appears difficult to reconcile with that passion. He told the Inquiry he would probably have preferred Panthers to leave the competition rather than merge to ensure top grade games continues to be played by a Panthers team at Penrith Stadium.

Mulock’s attack in the Weekender initiated the myth of the Footy Five, as Cowan explains:

He divided the Board into two groups and labelled one group the Footy Five. He was claiming the high ground for them, saying it was they who would save the club. He denigrated the three directors who had voted in favour of signing the non-binding letter.

So the very concept of a Footy Five, from the first day it was invented, was a total misconception.  I call it Mulock’s myth.

As for his other claims, there was no split on the Board about retaining our identity in rugby league. Chairman Barry Walsh has said many times, there was no vote on a merger. The only vote was about signing a non-binding letter.

What did Evans have in mind when he told the inquiry that there were some directors willing to accept a merger? Did he really believe something for which there is no evidence anywhere, or was he just having difficulty in breaking out of his paradigms?

A myth that Cowan had signed the letter grew in the wake of Mulock’s attack, linked to claims he wanted a merger and that Cowan was anti-rugby-league.

Roy Masters disagrees.

I saw that letter, and it was signed by one person, and it was not Roger Cowan.  I don’t know how hard he pushed it, but he didn’t push it so far that he signed that document.

The claims by Mick Kelly and others that Ron Mulock and/or the Footy Five had saved the Panthers from extinction are not borne out by the events of the time. The dogmatic stance taken by the Five could easily have spelled the end for the Panthers team.

North Sydney’s misfortunes during 1999 ultimately played a decisive role in saving Penrith. Norths’ stadium on the Central Coast was supposed to open for the 1999 season, but it rained in Gosford almost non-stop for months. The club had vacated its home ground at North Sydney oval, so all its home games had to be played as away games. What should have been a bumper season became a financial disaster for them.

It had been a well-kept secret that North Sydney had financial problems. Towards the end of the 1999 Season, they announced they were going into receivership, and thus had no chance of competing in the NRL on their own. The club formed a joint venture with Manly, and Penrith moved into 14th position. That day, for the first time, Penrith became assured of its place. For some months Cowan had been aware that Norths’ misfortune was helping to close the gap for Penrith. It was a tight tussle on the criteria ladder.

Cowan remained apprehensive right up until the final decision that ensured Panthers’ place in the fourteen-team competition. Three possibilities worried him. Firstly, Norths could – and probably would – finish in front of Penrith on the criteria score. Secondly, even if Penrith was only slightly ahead, grants of $20 million by two governments — given the political push to have a team at Gosford – might have somehow been included in the formula to push the advantage back to Norths. Finally, if Norths merged with Souths it would create an entirely new entity to take the 14th spot.

Each of those possibilities would have been the end of Panthers.

Cowan finally breathed a sigh of relief when Norths chose Manly as its partner. Manly had long been assured of a place, and Norths’ place became vacant for Penrith.

Panthers had survived — but only because events entirely outside the club’s control had unexpectedly changed the criteria race.

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.

  1. Editorial note: Footy Five is used here — and elsewhere — as retrospective shorthand. The name became associated with these five directors during the later Board conflict and election, rather than during the events being described here. See Beyond the Book — The Footy Five: A Name That Rewrote the Story.
    ↩︎
  2. This paragraph refers to John Bateman and Greg Evans two of the Panthers Board who were included, by Ron Mulock, in a group he called the Footy Five. ↩︎

← Part 36 · All Parts · Part 38 →

Commentary and Contributions

Political Ambition

A removed section from the original Chapter 11: A Strange Response to a Lifeline. The following section presents one theory Roger Cowan developed as he tried to understand decisions that had never fully made sense to him. It is an invitation into his thinking on the puzzle and should be read as his interpretation rather than an established historical conclusion.

Relatively speaking, John Bateman was a figure in the public eye in Penrith. In 1993, Sydney won the right to stage the Olympic Games in 2000.  Just over a year later, John Bateman was elected to Penrith council. Soon after that he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Penrith Rugby League Club board. At first glance these events appear unrelated. To Roger Cowan, however, they gradually formed part of a much larger picture.

Bateman, a member of the Labor Party, ran as an independent against Pat Sheehy – an endorsed Labor candidate. As a result, Bateman was expelled from the Party. Pat Sheehy is a long-time Penrith councillor. He believes there is little doubt that Bateman’s great ambition at the time was to be mayor at the time of the Olympics.

By all accounts, Bateman did an excellent job in that position.

Penrith councillor Jackie Greenow said the Olympics were a wonderful opportunity for Penrith, and Bateman was a good choice at the time.

John is a sporting nut, and he did an outstanding job representing council, Penrith and the entire community. He was meeting with dignitaries such as Princess Anne and Juan Antonio Samaranch, and he put in an enormous amount of work.

Roger Cowan agrees. ‘John Bateman was one of the best mayors we ever had’, he says.

While Pat Sheehy questions Cowan’s judgement on this point, he says ‘Other people could have done it, but probably not with the pizzazz that John Bateman did.’

For many years, mayors of Penrith had been restricted to a one-year term, following a ten-year stint by one mayor in the 70s. After Bateman had served his one year in 1999, he would normally have stepped aside for someone else.

Pat Sheehy explains.

John Bateman became mayor when he did simply because he had the numbers, and it was the year before the Olympics. There was a full council election in September 1999, and the Labor party effectively gained control. But the party decided that it was in the city’s best interest for John to continue as mayor in 2000, if that’s what he wanted to do, because of all the lead-up work he’d been involved in, and all the things that would carry over from September 1999 to the Olympics in September 2000. The other thing was that at that time, there was no-one else on council that could have done the job as well as he did it.

In my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that this is what John wanted more than anything in the world.

The events surrounding the emerging conflict in the Panthers boardroom naturally caused Cowan to search for reasons.

Over time I came to suspect that the real problem with signing it was that the media would start speculating again about ‘done deals’, for the purpose of grabbing headlines. It struck me that publicity indicating Panthers was about to merge with Parramatta, no matter how untrue, was not in the interests of either Bateman or Evans. With council elections looming and a decision to be made about who would be mayor in the Olympics year, it was probably the last thing they would want.

Statements that they believed signing the letter would have resulted in a merger leave a big question mark. How could it have ever led to a merger if the Five were against it? They had the majority vote.

I tried at the time to come up with an alternative to my growing belief that this whole rugby league issue, right from the time it was reported that Panthers was at serious risk, had been about political ambitions.

Their refusal to discuss strategies for reducing the risk generated powerful negative feelings in me. The feeling that it was all about politics and not about Panthers became a deep-seated festering sore in my psyche, even though I had no way of knowing if I was correct. It was this suppressed anger and frustration that caused me to explode in meetings from time to time.

Even in retrospect, I struggle to clean such a cynical view from my mind. I realise that if my interpretation had been correct, it would mean the catalyst for the enormous cost over the last few years to Panthers and to me had nothing to do with rugby league.

I can see one major flaw in my cynicism. To be a complete theory it would need an explanation of Mulock’s involvement. Having agonised over this one question for six or seven years, I could not find any explanation that made sense.

There is no solid evidence. The more objective view of a reader who was not closely involved may help find more generous conclusions.

Related Topics

Related Themes

Conflict · Board Decisions

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.

A Lifeline Rejected

Part 36 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 11: A Strange Response to a Lifeline

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

Panthers was running out of time.

With only days remaining before the deadline for NRL amalgamations, the club appeared destined to miss the cut for the new fourteen-team competition. Then, unexpectedly, a possible lifeline arrived.

It required nothing more than the signing of a non-binding letter.

The Board rejected it.

Through the first half of 1999, Penrith continued to sit at number fifteen in the NRL criteria. The deadline for amalgamations was midnight on 31 July.1

Commentators had labelled a merger between Parramatta and Penrith was a ‘done deal’. Community concern was mounting. Two Panthers directors with ambitions in local politics, John Bateman and Greg Evans, were sitting between a rock and a hard place.2

Late in July, Cowan received a call from rugby league headquarters concerning the deadline.

Penrith was still highly regarded in the Super League circles,3 and they were trying to do anything possible to assist us. It was obvious to everyone that we were in dire trouble. We sat solidly at number fifteen, and that didn’t look like changing. Nobody knew what was happening at Norths.

The call suggested that we could at least maintain a fallback position if we were prepared to sign a letter saying that we were still considering a merger with Parramatta and requesting more time.  The letter would very clearly state that it was not to be taken as any commitment to a merger.  It would be a non-binding document, aimed solely at keeping our options alive.

In his evidence to the Inquiry, John Bateman spoke of the events of July 1999. He said that when Cowan presented this offer to the board on 31 July, the Board resolved not to sign the letter. Bateman also spoke of his frustration concerning a paper that Cowan presented to the Board on 20 July, with the latest information on joint ventures.

 Bateman said:

In the previous September we had resolved to stand alone. That was our view, and then Roger tabled this paper giving us more information and basically telling us that we were in a risky position standing alone.

From a corporate governance perspective, directors are expected to receive and consider information that may materially affect the organisation. Why, then, would the presentation of updated information about such an important issue become a source of frustration?  A CEO who withheld such vital information would be guilty of poor corporate governance.4

On 31 July Cowan called a special meeting to advise the Board that there had been an offer that would overcome the need to comply with the 31 July deadline. Panthers would simply need to sign a non-binding letter addressed to NRL Chairman, Malcolm Noad. Cowan suggested to the Board that there was nothing to lose by signing it.

The document at the centre of the 31 July 1999 special Board meeting. Click image to read.

Bateman was not the only one who was angered by the presentation of the non-binding letter. The ex-wife of Greg Evans remembers how very stressed her husband was before leaving for that 31 July meeting.

Why these two directors reacted angrily to a non-binding proposal that would keep the Club’s options open remains a deep mystery. Cowan developed an interesting theory about it, which seems to be borne out by some seemingly unrelated events of the 1990s.

He came to believe that the concern could not have had anything to do with merging because it was a non-binding letter and the Footy Five had the numbers to prevent any merger any time they liked. He started to wonder if the problem was just the publicity.5

Greg Evans shed some unexpected light on the events of July 1999. He was adamant that none of the Five had believed that the document was actually non-binding.

I really believed that signing that letter was signing to merge with Parramatta. So did the others.

I believe if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then that’s what it is. It might have said non-binding, but once we signed it, we were going to merge. The NRL were putting enormous pressure on everyone, standing over teams, trying to force amalgamations. It was very bad PR for teams to die completely, so it was in their interest to push.

There was debate and discussion that night, but when the letter was discussed by the entire board, the fact that it was non-binding did not come into the discussion. Every member of that board believed it was an agreement to amalgamate.

Another of the Five, Geoff James, agreed with Evans, saying his view was ‘dead right’.

More about Greg Evans: See Major Player — Greg Evans

It might seem difficult for some readers to believe that anyone could misread such a letter.  It was a simple one-page document. There it is on the opposite page! Leo Armstrong, Barry Walsh, Keith Rhind and Terry Heidtmann had no doubt that it really was a non-binding agreement.

The committee had representation from local councils, and from local community organizations and businesses, as well as people from Panthers management and Board. The purpose of the committee was to devise strategies that would convince the league decision makers that they could not drop Penrith.

The other three members of the Footy Five group were asked in writing if they agreed with Greg Evans’ view. Dennis Coffey did not respond.

Craig Terry says he had a different perspective on the incident. The document said non-binding, he recalls.

But my view was that signing that document would signal that we were prepared to reopen the issue

It was an important document, and we had no legal advice to say what it actually meant. It did say ‘non-binding’, but what it said was not the main issue. We had made policy determinations that said ‘no’.

Later John Bateman wrote that whilst the document was non-binding, he felt that signing it would bring about a merger. Cowan says it would be easy to jump to conclusion about Evans and James when they claimed that the document was a binding agreement, but he believes it is possible they actually believed what they were saying.

If Evans and James genuinely believed the document committed Panthers to a merger, then an obvious question follows. How could intelligent and experienced people read a document that repeatedly described itself as “non-binding” and nevertheless conclude it required a merger?

The contradiction is difficult to ignore. The letter before the Board imposed no immediate legal obligation and expressly preserved Panthers’ ability to make future decisions. Yet some directors clearly believed it represented something much more significant.

Before considering one possible explanation for this apparent contradiction, it is worth pausing to appreciate just how differently the same document was being interpreted.

Cowan suggests an explanation comes from the author Joel Barker whose book The Business of Paradigms, explains that people interpret information through mental frameworks — beliefs and patterns of thinking. These mental frameworks, or paradigms, cause people to fail to see evidence that goes against their beliefs.

Barker says that even experienced scientists sometimes fail to see clear evidence, although it might be right before their eyes, if it is in conflict with what they expected to see, or what they believed.6

According to Cowan if directors came to that special meeting with the firm belief that they were being asked to vote on merging with Parramatta they could have been “trapped by their own paradigms”.

My argument that it was non-binding and that we had nothing to lose would have fallen on deaf ears.

From the Footy Five point of view, a decision not to sign may have had certain advantages, no matter what different reasons each of them had for not signing. Perhaps it was just plain old-fashioned good luck — make a silly mistake and it comes back to reward you.

Had they analysed the situation and concluded there was nothing to lose except some unwanted media speculation, it would have been difficult to justify not signing it. As directors they had a duty to do what was best for the business, and what rational argument could there be against keeping all the options open for as long as possible?

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.

  1. Only the top 14 ranked teams were to be included, amalgamated entities were guaranteed a spot – so this deadline had great relevance for Penrith.
    ↩︎
  2. Roger Cowan believed the political ambitions of both John Bateman and Greg Evans may have influenced the way they approached issues surrounding the merger debate. His reasoning is explored further in the accompanying Removed Section — Political Ambition.
    ↩︎
  3. Although Roger refers to “Super League circles”, he is really referring to senior figures associated with News Limited and the Super League organisation.
    ↩︎
  4. The Australian Institute of Company Directors identifies keeping directors informed of matters that may materially affect the organisation as one of the CEO’s fundamental governance responsibilities.
    ↩︎
  5. Roger Cowan eventually developed an alternative explanation for why this apparently harmless document generated such strong opposition. It is explored in the accompanying Removed Section — Political Ambition.
    ↩︎
  6. “Paradigms” was a subject often covered in training sessions at Panthers thoughout the 1990s. One of the videos consistently used is available on YouTube was Joel Barker’s Discovering the Future: The Business of Paradigms. It runs for about 40 minutes and shows how easy it is for thinking patterns to create perceptions that don’t match the evidence. ↩︎

← Part 35 · All Parts · Part 37 →

Commentary and Contributions

Following the Merger Debate

Contemporary newspaper coverage from the Western Weekender, July- September 1998

Editors Note: The articles selected for this Beyond the Book entry are those that best illustrate the major stages in the public debate as it evolved between July and September 1998.

The following newspaper articles are presented in chronological order. Together they allow readers to follow one of the most significant episodes in Panthers’ history as it unfolded during 1998. Rather than viewing events with the benefit of hindsight, they invite readers to experience the uncertainty, competing arguments and rapidly changing public debate that surrounded the proposed merger discussions.

These articles illustrate how the debate gradually expanded — from Board deliberations, to community campaigns, to local government, to the wider media — before eventually reaching the public information meeting that proved to be a turning point in the story

24 July 1998 — Stand Alone

Commentary

This was one of the first major reports after discussion of a possible merger became widely known. The article captures the immediate emotional response within the Penrith community and reflects the strength of the emerging “Stand Alone” campaign.

At the same time, it provides readers with Roger Cowan’s explanation of why management believed every contingency needed to be examined if Panthers was to maximise its chances of remaining in the National Rugby League.

Reading the article today, one feature stands out. The emotional and practical arguments were already beginning to diverge. While much of the public discussion centred on loyalty and identity, management continued to focus on risk, planning and the long-term survival of the club.

Despite Cowan and his management team being as passionate and loyal — as emotionally invested — as the most fervent supporter, these qualities were already being overshadowed by the emerging public narrative.

31 July 1998 — War of Words

Commentary

Within a week the debate had expanded well beyond Penrith itself. Sydney’s leading radio commentator, Ray Hadley, had broadcast damaging misinformation about Panthers prompting the Club to respond with an open letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Western Weekender.

This exchange illustrates how quickly the discussion moved from private Board deliberations to public debate. Importantly, it also demonstrates that Roger Cowan’s explanation of the club’s position was being expressed publicly at the time. The account presented throughout Parts 29–35 is therefore not a reconstruction created years later, but reflects the position being articulated as events unfolded.

Readers may wish to compare this article with the discussion in Part 33 of The Series — A Good Story Trumps Truth — where the relationship between public perception and documented fact is explored in greater detail.

7 August 1998 — Merger Decision Deferred

Commentary

This article is significant because it records Panthers’ management describing its decision-making process while events were still unfolding. It’s headline — Damned if you do … — echoes the difficulties being encountered by those responsible for the Club. Roger Cowan repeatedly emphasises that the Board was analysing the risks, considering several possible scenarios and attempting to avoid making decisions based purely on emotion.

It is also a reminder that the future remained highly uncertain. Today it is easy to assume that Panthers’ eventual survival was inevitable. In August 1998 it was anything but certain — indeed, the uncertainty persisted until North Sydney and Manly announced their merger more than a year after the events chronicled here.

21 August 1998 — Council Enters the Debate

Commentary

By late August the merger debate had expanded well beyond Panthers’ Boardroom. Penrith City Council formally resolved to urge the club to remain a stand-alone participant in the National Rugby League, arguing that the Panthers name had become an important part of the city’s identity and economic development.

The article is of particular significance because it captures the complex position occupied by Deputy Mayor John Bateman, who was both a Panthers director and a councillor. Speaking in his capacity as a councillor, Bateman publicly praised the professionalism of Panthers’ management, confirmed that no merger agreement had been reached and acknowledged that the economic case being examined by management was a strong one. At the same time, he explained why he personally believed the socio-economic arguments for retaining an independent Penrith team were ultimately more compelling.

With hindsight, the article demonstrates that the debate had become far more sophisticated than a simple contest between “for” and “against”. Competing economic, governance and community considerations were all being weighed, even by people who ultimately reached different conclusions.

The relationship between the football team and the identity of Penrith had much earlier found an unusual expression when PENRITH CITY appeared across the Panthers jersey in 1988.

11 September 1998 — The Passion … The Practical

Commentary

The public information meeting marked an important turning point in the merger debate. As described in Part 34, Roger Cowan later recalled the meeting as having become an “ambush”, while many supporters regarded it as the defining moment in the campaign to remain a stand-alone club.

The reporting that followed is interesting for another reason. Rather than simply recording the arguments presented, the article framed the debate as one of “Passion” versus “Practical”. Ron Mulock’s position appeared under the heading The Passion, while Roger Cowan’s appeared under …the Practical.

Whether intentional or not, this framing invites an interesting question. Was the debate really between passion and practicality, or were both men expressing different forms of commitment to the same objective — the long-term future of Panthers?

Readers who have followed Parts 29–35 may notice a striking irony. Throughout those chapters, management’s practical approach — risk analysis, contingency planning and exploring every available option — was itself driven by a determination to preserve Panthers’ place in the National Rugby League. The practical and the passionate were not necessarily opposing ideas; they were different philosophies for pursuing what each believed was in the club’s best interests.

It is obvious that both sides of this debate were driven by people holding strong loyalty and devotion to the Penrith Panthers.

Looking Back

Reading these articles nearly three decades later, several observations stand out.

The uncertainty of the time is unmistakable. Decisions that now seem obvious were anything but obvious in 1998. Much of the debate took place before supporters had access to the information available today.

The articles also reveal how rapidly public narratives developed. As discussions moved from the Boardroom into newspapers, radio and public meetings, the story acquired a momentum of its own. Perceptions often became as influential as documented facts.

Perhaps most interesting of all is the consistency of Roger Cowan’s public position. Whether speaking through interviews, open letters or Board statements, the central themes remained remarkably consistent: the risks were real, the future uncertain, and management had a responsibility to examine every realistic option before events overtook the club.

These articles go beyond being simple contemporary newspaper clippings. They are historical documents that allow readers to experience events as they unfolded, before hindsight shaped later interpretations.

The Panthers Merger Debate Newspaper Collection (PDF Download)

Readers wishing to explore these articles in full can download the accompanying PDF containing the complete Western Weekender collection reproduced in this Beyond the Book entry.

Resources

The Panthers Merger Debate Newspaper Collection (PDF)

Related Topics

Related Themes

Conflict · Financial Management · Media

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.