The existence of two rival competitions created enormous upheaval throughout rugby league. Traditional club rivalries remained, but supporters were now divided between the Australian Rugby League and Super League. Both sides eventually recognised that the conflict was causing immeasurable damage to the game. While rugby league fought its civil war, AFL, rugby union and soccer continued strengthening their positions in New South Wales and Queensland.

Eventually, both organisations accepted that the conflict could not continue. A peace process began and, after lengthy negotiations, agreement was reached. Super League had lasted just one season.

In 1998 and 1999 twenty teams played in the competition, because newly created Super League teams were accommodated with longer established clubs. Everyone agreed that twenty teams were far too many.

Roger Cowan was directly involved in the peace process. For about 12 months before the parties came to terms, he attended meetings with News Limited’s Ian Frykberg, along with representatives of the other two Sydney Super League clubs, trying to come up with a solution.

It was a slow process. Each side knew what they wanted, but they were poles apart. The ARL wanted all its clubs to be included in any national competition. Super League was advocating a limit of twelve teams. Their position was that fewer teams would mean a much better standard of competition. On a financial level, they believed that too many Sydney teams would make it difficult for clubs to gain the necessary support from sponsors and fans to be successful.

In 1997, a compromise was reached. A set of criteria was established, which would be followed to cut teams down to 14 by 2000. According to Cowan, this path was set in concrete. His close involvement in Super League had given him an opportunity to get to know the people who had driven the concept. The fixity of the ceiling has been borne out by a number of people, including NRL CEO David Gallop.¹

The criteria system was sold as the fairest way of deciding which clubs would survive. The clubs would be awarded points, based on things such as crowds at both their home and away games, competition points over the previous five years and actual gate receipt dollars from home games. They would also be judged on sponsorship and other income, and on their overall profitability. Longevity, tradition and emotion just did not come into it. Nor did junior league, which was one of Penrith’s strengths.

Despite repeated objections, Panthers was unable to secure any significant change to the criteria.They continued to fight against the system, believing it was biased on several levels. They sent submissions to the NRL claiming that because some of the criteria were retrospective, the figures were not auditable. It also became obvious that some clubs were fudging their crowd numbers to help boost their chances.

A criticism of Penrith by the chairman of the Easts club was aired in the media, and sparked a Panther strategy to photograph the crowds at other grounds. The first photographs were taken at Easts’ next home game after the criticism was published. The images allowed the crowd to be easily counted – there were less than 3,000 in the ground. Easts claimed a crowd of more than 5,000.

The clarity of the photographs convinced the club to expand the project and photograph the crowds at nearly every game at Sydney venues² — but especially at the games played by clubs vying for the bottom few spots under the criteria. There was convincing evidence that most clubs were falsifying crowd numbers. Cowan says the figures may have been useful in mounting some kind of last ditch stand on the grounds that the selection criteria would not stand up in court. He says it was a rather negative strategy, with little chance of success, but they were desperate times.

The Panthers’ crowd-counting exercise became one of the more unusual episodes of the fight for survival. Read more Beyond the Book — Counting Crowds to Chase Survival.

In parallel with the photo campaign, the club spent around half a million dollars to market the game to boost its profile and its crowds.³

It was a surprise to Panthers’ management team that South Sydney never called on those photographs during their efforts to be readmitted to the competition. Their legal advisors could evidently see no value and perhaps indicating that it would have been an unsuccessful strategy for Panthers to pursue. No one knows for sure – it was never tested – but it is a fact that Souths eventually lost their case in court.

Penrith had twelve months to compete for points. Two clubs – the Hunter Mariners and the South Queensland
Crushers – had already dipped out, leaving 18 teams vying for 14 places. 

Management’s concern was not based on instinct or pessimism. Week after week, the numbers continued pointing in the same direction.

Tracking Panthers’ position against the selection criteria became the responsibility of marketing manager Max Cowan, whose background included a major in Mathematical Statistics.

Throughout the process, Panthers’ management was surprised by comments from some clubs suggesting they neither understood the criteria nor knew where they stood. It was an issue given high priority in management strategies at Panthers. Every week the club compared its situation with the relative positions of the clubs ranking lowest on the criteria.

Max Cowan remembers:

We were very aware of the commitment and determination to have a fourteen-team competition. Having been right there through the conciliation process, I knew there was absolutely no room for complacency.

Some Clubs had already announced mergers, but at Penrith it was not a word anyone wanted to mention. We also knew that any club considering a merger with us would start negotiation with an advantage because it was obvious where we stood in the criteria ladder. As a management team, we had to look for options. It would be a disaster if we sat on our hands until a decision to cut Panthers was announced. By that time it would be too late to look for a fall-back position.

Part of the reason for our low place in the criteria was the very low attendances at our home games. We had lost our major sponsor when we went into Super League and had been unable to find a replacement. So immediately we were in trouble in two of six categories.Part of the reason for our low place in the criteria was the very low attendances at our home games. We had lost our major sponsor when we went into Super League and had been unable to find a replacement. So immediately we were in trouble in two of six categories.

It was obvious to management that we were running a very poor sixteenth in a race where only fourteen would be selected.  We had to move up two places or have no team in the competition for the following year.  We only had one year to do it. Realistically we knew we would need a miracle. It would be impossible to achieve.

At the very last minute, and in a most unexpected way, we would get our miracle!

Continue Reading: The Criteria — When Survival Became a Numbers Game examines the NRL Selection Criteria and the internal working papers Panthers developed to estimate the club’s position in the race for admission to the fourteen-team competition.

1. Inside Panthers there were always processes engaged to inform decision-making. While “gut-feel” was respected it could only ever be part of a more rational approach. Management submissions to the Board were always anchored by by evidence gathered and analysed — especially where decisions had to made in an environmentt of uncertainty. This was probably never more evident than when it came to determining what was happening, and what could or should happen in Rugby League.
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2. “Nearly every game” is not quite right — perhaps nearly every game in Sydney would be more accurate. We did conduct this research at 2-3 games each round. It was a nightmare to “count the crowd”, if only we had good scanning capability back then. Anyway, we did enough to understand exactly how much Sydney clubs were inflating their attendances – and it may surprise that the Roosters were not the biggest offenders.
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3. The spend mentioned here was not publicised — in fact, it was known only to a few people — and it is another strong piece of evidence that Roger Cowan was leading a team making every effort to maintain Penrith Panthers as a stand-alone team. This effort did not diminish the responsibility to keep examining all possible outcomes. ↩︎

Commentary and Contributions

In May 1995 Panthers had resolved to leave the Australian Rugby League to join Super League, the new competition being established by Rupert Murdoch’s multi-national corporation News Limited. It had been one of the most difficult decisions the Club had faced.¹ Cowan had spent months analysing the situation with both Board and management before a consensus recommendation was finally put to the directors.

Not long before the decision was made, he was still hoping the problem would go away. Long-time Parramatta CEO, Denis Fitzgerald, remembers Cowan standing up at a CEO function at Souths Juniors, speaking passionately about ‘putting up the barriers to News Limited’.

Within a week he’d gone to Super League. I have to say I lost some degree of confidence in Roger after that particular situation.

There was no doubt that Cowan initially supported staying with the ARL and a short time later changed his position — he was nervous about the way things were shaping up and feared that Penrith might miss out completely.  

Coach Phil Gould had asked for a release from his contract with Panthers² to go to Easts, citing the exciting things that Easts were proposing to do in rugby league. Kerry Packer was putting pressure on clubs to stay loyal to the ARL, but was not offering anything specific, and he had a contract with the ARL to protect.

There were rumours that Packer and a few clubs, including Easts and Manly, were involved in a plan to cull some clubs in order to make a stronger and more profitable competition.³ The rumours fitted with Gould’s statements when he asked for a release but there was never any real evidence to support the rumours.

But rumours often travelled faster than fact during this period — it was increasingly difficult for clubs to distinguish genuine intelligence from speculation.

Packer appeared to have the TV rights tied up for a ridiculously low price and something was in the wind. Fewer teams in the competition would give the remaining teams a bigger slice of the TV revenue. A higher standard of competition would increase the TV value.

First-hand experience had left Cowan with the suspicion that there would no hesitation in cutting clubs that were outside the clique and considered expendable. For him it was another case of risk management. The first step in risk management is to identify the risk. In this case there was a chance that both media organisations, headed by Packer and Murdoch, were both planning how to maximise the commercialisation of Rugby League.

What was the risk to Penrith?

It seemed highly likely that both organisations would want a 12-team competition. They would also want a National Competition including Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, New Zealand, Newcastle, Brisbane, even North and South Queensland.   It followed that some Sydney clubs would be dropped.   Both groups would already know which teams they wanted in an elite competition.

Neither side had shown any interest in approaching Penrith.

Considering the connections, it was impossible to think Manly or Easts would lose out. Parramatta and St George would seem to be certainties and that might leave only one spot for another Sydney club.

As it turned out, fewer teams was exactly what the Murdoch side wanted. There was never any evidence of any plans by the other side to drop Sydney teams.⁴ The rumours were never substantiated, but the value of the TV rights was later proved to be more than twenty times what Packer had contracted to pay.

Cowan recalls it was a difficult time.

There was no way of knowing what was happening behind the scenes and the departure of Phil Gould had built a feeling of uncertainty in my mind about the future of the game. I felt that something was going on. I started to think about how we would handle worst case scenarios, and the worst-case possibility was that the two sides would get together and form an elite National Competition of 12 teams. All the other teams would then be relegated to a supporting competition. On all the evidence I could see, the risk of Penrith being one of those relegated teams was very high indeed.

When the two media giants started shaping up to each other it was obvious that Panthers was not a high priority for either of them. It was a worrying time and I started to feel that we had to consider our position carefully and urgently.

All the clubs that had so far joined Super League had been approached by News Limited. Penrith had not. Cowan went to News and put the case that the new competition needed Penrith.

David Gallop, CEO of the new National Rugby League [NRL] remembers that Panthers was the last Sydney club to join.

Roger looked pretty carefully at the ramifications of joining or not. It took him longer to decide.

Cowan became a prominent player in the world of Super League. He was on the board, and chaired its meetings during what became known as the Super League Wars.

He was also invited to be on the international Super League board. In that capacity he attended an international board meeting in Paris, along with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, France, England, South Africa, USA and Pacific Islands. Cowan says this experience gave him an excellent opportunity to get to know the people who were driving Super League, including News Limited executives. 

Super League was due to commence in 1996 with ten teams, but a Federal Court ruling delayed its launch. Instead, a traditional ARL competition was played while the legal battle continued. At the end of 1996 the Federal Court ruled in favour of Super League, allowing the rival competition to proceed in 1997 alongside the ARL. Australian rugby league was now heading into one of the most turbulent periods in its history.

1. For readers seeking historical background to the emergence of Super League and Panthers’ decision to join the new competition, see the three realted Historical Context articles The Panthers Move ; The Real Money Fight ; and When Panthers Faced the Community
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2. This had happened in the middle of the 1994 ARL Season. I think the Souths v Penrith at the SFS on 17^th June 1994 was Gould’s last as Penrith coach. We lost that game 26-18 after being well down at half-time. Several players remarked that Gould’s half-time address was uncharacteristically one of resignation – they were puzzled by it.
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3. One of the catalysts for those rumours was a large offer being made to Canberra lock Brad Clyde, which would have torpedoed salary cap limits. Of course, these sorts of accusations fly through the rugby league world.
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4. There weren’t rumours about an elite ARL competition after Murdoch made his strike – at that time they were intent on staving off the raid from Murdoch. Before Murdoch struck, there were rumours about clubs opening their chequebooks in anticipation of a big change to the competition. ↩︎

Commentary and Contributions