Early in 2001 the Board approved Mark Levy’s recommendation that Royce Simmons be re-signed for a further two years. The decision ultimately led to his departure in a way that, to Cowan, was both regrettable and unnecessary.
Royce Simmons was an icon in Penrith. He had come from the country as a young player and had shown enormous commitment to the club for close to twenty years. He was – justifiably – looked upon as one of the heroes of the Panthers’ 1991 Grand Final win. He was extremely popular with sponsors and supporters.
Levy approached the board in early 2001, saying that Simmons believed that some high-profile players would not sign new contracts until they knew Simmons’ contract had been extended. Cowan remembers there was mixed reaction from the Board. Significantly, the five directors who so often voted together were themselves divided on the issue.
Cowan believed the mechanisms that had previously allowed for detailed discussion and analysis were no longer operating in the same way, making the situation even more difficult. Most importantly, it had to be handled carefully. Because of Simmons’ popularity, if word leaked that the board was reluctant to extend his contract, a strong backlash was likely.
He had been quite successful as a coach, which increased the pressure. Although the club had been badly damaged by the Super League wars, Simmons had taken the team to the finals in 1997 and again in 2000. In 2000, the club had also broken records for attendance and sponsorship.
Taking all this into account, the Board agreed with Levy’s proposal and signed the two year contract. Cowan says the 2001 season was a disaster.
The team was not just losing; it was barely competitive in many games. It finished the season in last place. In Royce’s defence, he had been at the club for a very long time compared with the usual coaching careers. A rigid salary cap had prevented the club from adding any new players to the team. However, we still had a good solid base from the previous year, and we had faced the new season with high hopes.
But it does not work that way in rugby league. Having no new blood served to dampen the morale and enthusiasm of the coach, the staff, and the team. The continual losses hit Royce particularly hard. They sapped his confidence, which didn’t help the situation. By the middle of the season, it was obvious that we were in trouble.
In my own mind I was trying to work out how we could overcome the problem at the end of the year. Royce had a two-year contract, and the decision-making processes of the club were basically in the hands of five directors.
By the second half of the season, Cowan had reached the view that the only way to restore spirit to the team was to replace the coach and several members of the football staff.
He could see no value in making drastic changes halfway through the season. It was his plan to spend the remainder of the season collecting as much information as possible, and to work with some trusted staff to try to analyse the problems and come up with solutions.
Had things been different, part of the process would have been consultations with the Board, but he says that by this time, breaches of confidentiality were a fact of life at that level. The last thing the coach and team needed was to have their problems publicly debated in newspapers, and on television and radio. Cowan adds that it often seemed that Ron Mulock and the WesternWeekender knew things before he did.
Around the same time, and unbeknown to the rest of the Board, Dennis Coffey and John Bateman were meeting privately with some senior Panthers players. They later said that players had expressed dissatisfaction with the coach during those meetings.
To Cowan, the meetings presented a serious governance problem. He believed concerns of that significance should have been brought back to the full Board and management rather than pursued independently by individual directors. This was particularly difficult for him to reconcile with Bateman’s frequently expressed concerns about corporate governance.
It was also extremely naïve to think that the meetings would remain secret.1
Soon there was a blaze of publicity. Instead of being handled with discretion and objectivity, Simmons’ future became an emotional public issue that further undermined his position.There were divisions among sponsors and fans. The players, already suffering because of the bad season, were caught in the crossfire.
Cowan says he backed away from making a recommendation but suggested that they consider moving back to the old system, where the responsibility for hiring and firing rested with management.
Greg Evans was vehemently opposed to handing back this power. I was equally obstinate, believing that it was the only way to fix the problem without causing more conflict in the community.
Finally, the Board agreed that Cowan should handle the matter, effectively returning responsibility for the coaching decision to management. Royce Simmons was sacked as coach, to be followed soon after by most of the coaching staff.
As a result, Greg Evans resigned from the Board, to be reinstated about six months later.
Substantial changes followed within the rugby league operation. John Lang was appointed coach, and two seasons later Penrith won its second premiership.
Cowan reflects on the problem:
The phenomenon of coaches reaching a year of failure is not unusual. It is not because a good coach suddenly becomes a bad coach. Had Royce Simmons left Panthers one year earlier, he would have left on a very high note. He gave much to the club over many years. As a coach he was virtually a workaholic and would probably have cheerfully donated his right arm in return for a successful Panthers team. The way he left was sad and did not do justice to his service with the club. What is even more sad is that it could have been avoided.
Recognition should also be accorded to many others from that era, including Mark Levy and all of Royce’s coaching and support staff. Unfortunately, timing in these matters is all-important – a club full of heroes at the end of 2000 and most of them sacked by the end of 2001.
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Max Cowan recalls speaking to some players about what was happening. “Some were furious that other players were, as they saw it, putting the skids under Royce; others were despondent at the prospect of continuing with him as coach. It seemed clear to me that Bateman and Coffey had unwittingly undermined the coach and added to the instability of the team. ↩︎
Cowan’s ‘hands on’ approach to rugby league saw him step into the role of rugby league CEO a number of times. He was involved in some monumental rugby league decisions in the club’s history, including engaging some very successful coaches.
Strangely though, he says his passion about rugby league resulted in him sometimes being less tolerant of people than he should have been. This brought him into conflict with people,
I should have been able to handle the rugby league issues better than I did. The number of people who think I was anti-rugby-league is an indication that I was not communicating well. There is plenty of evidence to show that I was passionate about having a successful team. But I resented seeing waste arising from irresponsible decisions.
I could also never cope with people who kept prattling on about the Club not putting enough money into rugby league to make it successful. To my way of thinking they were just ratbags who did not have the common sense to see that if we put unlimited money into rugby league it would only last a few years and then there would be none. To me all this was obvious. The most important thing was good management of the resources that we had, rather than having to spend our way out of trouble because of poor management. It frustrated me that some people just couldn’t see it, and there were probably many times I showed how I felt — which is not the way to win friends and influence…
But when people suggested initiatives that presented a chance to build success,I was never opposed to spending the money. On one occasion I had a call from rugby league commentator Frank Hyde, suggesting we consider getting players from South Africa. His rationale seemed very logical, and the idea looked promising. The Board agreed to my recommendation to try it, despite the expense.
FROM THE ARCHIVES Looking Further Afield — Penrith’s South African Recruitment Mission In 1972, a four-man Panthers delegation travelled to South Africa looking for players who might strengthen the struggling first-grade team. The venture became a rather more unusual recruitment story than that simple description suggests. Read the original account
Another time Alan Clarkson told me of a terrific English player who would probably come to Australia if invited. His name was Bill Ashurst. I reached an agreement with Bill, and we agreed to pay a very large transfer fee to his club. When another club tried to get under our guard, we sent two directors to England to make sure we clinched the deal. The two directors rang from England saying that we could also get the English captain, Mick Stephenson, if we were willing to pay another large transfer fee. We paid record money for thoseplayers, and I supported it all the way. The success of those two choices is part of Panthers’ folklore.1
The fact is that I cannot recall one occasion when a request for money to fund a well-thought-out rugby league initiative was refused by the board or opposed by me. In addition to that, the criticism that I would not give rugby league enough money shows an ignorance of the procedure. The football club would present a budget to the board of the licensed club at the beginning of each season. On most occasions it was approved. But sometimes – and particularly in the Cartwright era – we would be confronted with a huge deficit at the end of the season, and that’s when I would go off my brain.
After ‘one board, one CEO’ became reality in 1984, Cowan led or participated in most of the important plans and decisions for coaching the Panthers.
The change was followed by a much more deliberate approach to football development. Among the initiatives was the Five-by-Five Plan, which set the ambitious goal of having five locally developed players representing Australia within five years. Within six years of the structural change, Penrith reached its first Grand Final; a year later, the Panthers won their first premiership.2
Those decisions also included included the eventual decision to replace Royce Simmons and the contract Cowan negotiated with John Lang, who would take the club to its second premiership. At this time Cowan had once again taken over responsibility for rugby league after a major restructure that saw most of the club’s rugby football staff depart, including rugby league CEO Mark Levy.
Although there had been a number of dramatic rugby league upheavals over the years, Cowan says that, until the Simmons episode, major changes had generally been made with minimal adverse publicity. He attributed much of that to the club’s participative approach to decision-making.
It all seemed to operate quite smoothly, and a lot of that could be attributed to our participative style of management. Any changes were thoroughly discussed and explored before they were made. For example, the final meeting with Ron Willey was preceded by a meeting of the rugby league chief executive and about six other managers. Their brief was to help me analyse the problem, and decide what should be done about it, and how adverse publicity could be avoided. The Board Executive was also brought in before any action was taken.
Similarly, the decision to join Super League followed months of analysis and discussion involving key staff and the Board.
Cowan strongly rejected claims that he ran the Club as a dictatorship.
He maintained that the five directors who later complained about his management had themselves participated for years in the Club’s consultative decision-making processes. His involvement in the departure of some high-profile rugby league personalities nevertheless provided further ammunition for his critics.
Around 1999, the Board began to become more directly involved in the management of rugby league — a development Cowan regarded as a backward step.
It started with a very simple request from the board that Simmons and Levy should attend the start of every second meeting to deliver a football report.
The Simmons/Levy visits soon moved beyond their rugby league reports. What had begun as a straightforward reporting arrangement gradually altered the decision-making structure. In Cowan’s view, it was a step back towards the arrangement of the Charlie Gibson years: one Board dealing directly with separate executives responsible for the registered club and rugby league.
It was a subtle shift away from the model of discussion and analysis that had operated for about fifteen years, towards more direct decision-making structure by the Board.
Cowan cites an example:
At one meeting, Simmons proposed a payment of $100,000 to a player who was exempted from the salary cap. It took all of one minute for the Board to agree, despite a couple of strong dissenters. Previously, something like this would have been analysed carefully by a team. Only then would it have been referred to the board. It was a very poor decision, and fortunately – because of other reasons – it did not happen.
A decision by the Board early in 2001 had massive repercussions.
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For Roger Cowan, a problem was rarely just the incident that brought it to attention.
His instinct was to pull it apart. What was actually going wrong? Who was affected? What outcome was required? And, most importantly, could a system be designed that would produce that outcome more consistently?
It was an approach to problem-solving and decision-making he was embedding across the Panthers organisation throughout the 1990s — and one he believed was important to its continuing success.
Few examples illustrate that approach better than his work on rugby league’s judiciary.
The problem had bothered him for decades.
“Sit down, Mr Cowan”
As Roger recalled in Panthers, Passion & Politics, when he served on the NSW Rugby League executive committee in the early 1970s, judiciary decisions regularly created controversy. Penalties appeared inconsistent and clubs sometimes believed others were receiving more favourable treatment.
Eventually he tried to raise the issue at an executive meeting.
“I want to make a suggestion about the judiciary system,” he told chairman Bill Buckley.
“Sit down, Mr Cowan, you’re not here to talk about judiciary.”
Roger tried again.
“Sit down Mr Cowan or leave the meeting. You are out of order.”
That was the end of the discussion.
More than twenty years later, rugby league had changed dramatically — and was in the process of changing even more.
During the planning for Super League, the judiciary came up for discussion. Roger said he had “always had a passion for judiciary” and offered to prepare a paper.
This time the response was different.
“Terrific! Go ahead, do it.”
So he did.
Start with the outcome
The surviving working paper is dated 24 November 1995.
Its opening is revealing.
Roger did not begin by deciding who should sit on the judiciary or what punishment should apply to a high tackle.
He began by identifying what a better judiciary system should achieve. What is the outcome — what evidence will demonstrate the system is a success?
Among a list of outcomes were: reduced levels of public criticism of judiciary decisions; elimination of the perception that penalties were inconsistent or favoured particular clubs; less involvement of solicitors; reduced number of hearings and shorter duration; and elimination of appeals based simply on the severity of a sentence.
Before designing the machinery, he defined what the machinery was supposed to accomplish.
That changed the nature of the problem.
It wasn’t simply a question of whether an individual judiciary panel made the right or wrong decision. A system could produce perfectly defensible individual decisions and still create inconsistency, expense, delay and a perception of unfairness.
Roger’s proposal therefore attempted to move responsibility for consistency away from the discretion of whichever individuals happened to be sitting on a particular night and place much more of it within the system itself.
Separate guilt from penalty
At the centre of the proposal was a relatively simple distinction.
The judiciary should determine whether a player was guilty and, if so, what offence had been committed.
Ordinarily, it should not then decide the penalty from scratch.
Offences would instead be divided into clearly defined categories carrying predetermined penalties. Discounts and additional penalties could be applied according to defined circumstances.
A player whose guilt was clear could plead guilty, receive the appropriate discount and avoid a hearing altogether. A player maintaining innocence retained the right to have the case heard.
By January 1996, when Roger presented the proposal to Super League, the concept had been distilled into five principal elements:
experts should be used where necessary;
a Head of Judiciary should control the process;
there should be incentives for guilty pleas;
penalties should be predetermined, with the judiciary principally deciding guilt rather than sentence; and
hearings should generally occur only where a player pleaded not guilty.
The objective was not simply tougher or softer penalties.
It was greater consistency.
Design the process, not just the idea
Roger’s November paper went well beyond the broad concept.
It worked through what should happen from the time an incident occurred.
The Head of Judiciary would identify an appropriate charge and notify the player. Where necessary, expert analysis could be obtained. If that evidence exonerated the player, the matter ended. If it supported the charge, the player had another opportunity to plead guilty. If the player continued to maintain innocence, a judiciary hearing followed.
The proposal dealt with who should pay for expert evidence. It considered appeals and appeal fees. It provided for records of previous offences, discounts for guilty pleas and additional penalties in defined circumstances.
Roger even tried to anticipate the objections to what he was proposing.
One obvious objection to predetermined penalties was that no two incidents were exactly alike.
Surely a judiciary panel needed discretion to recognise the difference?
Roger’s answer wasn’t to ignore those differences and he produced the principle that offences a more precisely defined and graded.
A high tackle, for example, might be divided into 20 or more categories, each carrying its own penalty.
He also recognised the potential danger in relying upon expert analysis. If a new system placed greater weight on expert evidence and that evidence was subsequently shown to be wrong, confidence in the entire system could be damaged.
One proposed safeguard was a second expert opinion in controversial cases.
Even the media were considered part of the process.
Journalists and editors should have access to the schedules of offences, penalties, discounts and additions. Expert reports should be available and journalists invited to see the video evidence supporting them.
Public understanding wasn’t something to worry about after a decision had been made.
It was part of the system.
From weeks to points
Perhaps one of the most interesting ideas appears under the rather modest heading “Future Considerations.”
Roger had identified another problem.
If suspensions were expressed only in whole weeks, a carefully graded series of offences could still end up producing the same penalty. Several different levels of seriousness might all result in a one-week suspension.
So he considered a points system.
One hundred points could represent a one-week suspension. A penalty of 275 points could produce an immediate two-week suspension, with 75 points carried forward. Discounts and additions could also be expressed as points.
It allowed much finer distinctions between offences and circumstances.
The significance for this story is not simply the points themselves.
The working paper captures Roger’s thought process while it was happening:
If we solve this problem, what new problem might our solution create? And how might we solve that?
Not entirely Roger’s system
The proposal did not simply emerge from Roger’s office and become the Super League judiciary unchanged.
Roger himself was quite clear about that.
Many people became involved in developing the final system and compromises were made. His original submission was not adopted in its entirety, although he believed most of its principles survived.
That distinction becomes particularly important when the story reaches 1998.
By then Super League and the Australian Rugby League had come together in the new National Rugby League, and a decision had to be made about which judiciary system the unified competition would use.
The two systems were fundamentally different.
Roger attended meetings between representatives of the ARL and Super League attempting to reach agreement. According to his later account, those meetings achieved little and the question was eventually referred to the chief executives of the 20 clubs.
They heard submissions supporting both alternatives.
The result, Roger recorded, was 18 votes to two in favour of the Super League system — including support from 10 of the 12 former ARL clubs.
It appeared that the argument had been won.
Roger soon became convinced that something very different had happened.
The system meets the real world
By June 1998, the new NRL judiciary was attracting considerable public criticism.
This was the first season of the unified competition and the clubs had overwhelmingly chosen the Super League judiciary model. Yet some early decisions were already raising questions about whether the system being implemented was actually operating according to the principles the clubs had endorsed.
Two cases involving prominent players became particularly contentious.
Glenn Lazarus, playing for the Melbourne Storm on the eve of a State of Origin match, had received 130 points for a high tackle. With 100 points producing an automatic one-match suspension, the penalty would have ruled him out of State of Origin. The penalty was reduced to 99 points — allowing Lazarus to play Origin, leaving the 99 points to be carried forward.
Geoff Toovey’s circumstances were different. Due to his past judicial recorded any offences attracted a loading on a standard penalty. He — again enough for an automatic one-match suspension. Toovey’s points were reduced back to 75 Concerned that suspending a prominent and respected captain for such a minor offence would appear unreasonable, the authorities reduced his points to 75.2
Whatever the merits of either decision, both exposed a problem at the heart of a system intended to produce consistency.
If Lazarus’s circumstances justified reducing 130 points to 99, what would happen when the next player accumulated 130 points but did not have a State of Origin match approaching?
If Toovey’s standing in the game, or the relatively minor nature of the offence that triggered his suspension, justified reducing his accumulated points, would the same consideration be available to a less prominent player?
These were among the controversies being discussed publicly by radio broadcaster Ray Hadley.
Roger had been listening.
On 15 June 1998, he wrote Hadley a five-page letter. He agreed that a number of decisions during the season appeared “absurd from the public’s point of view”.
But Roger believed the controversy was being blamed on the wrong thing.
The problem, as he saw it, was not that the principles developed for the Super League judiciary had failed. It was that the NRL judiciary had departed from what he regarded as the most fundamental of those principles.
The difference came down to a deceptively simple question:
Who was responsible for consistency?
Under the old system, that responsibility rested substantially with the judiciary panel. Change the people and the interpretation — and potentially the outcomes — could change with them.
The Super League philosophy put much greater responsibility upon the administrators of the game.
The judiciary determined guilt. The rules and schedules provided consistency in penalty.
Those rules could be changed.
But when they changed, they changed for everyone.
Learn from the bad decision
This is where the Hadley letter perhaps reveals more about Roger’s thinking than the original proposal.
He did not suggest that his system would prevent every bad or controversial outcome.
Quite the opposite:
“No judiciary system will ever be perfect.”
What mattered was what happened when an imperfection became apparent.
A good system, he wrote, should produce greater consistency and generate its own improvements.
If a particular case exposed an unfair penalty, the administrators could change the schedule.
The next player committing the same or a closely comparable offence would then receive the new penalty.
The lesson from the controversial decision had been captured by the system.
That was fundamentally different from allowing a panel to produce a different result next time simply because its members regarded the circumstances differently.
The first approach changed the rule for everyone.
The second changed the decision for one person.
Lazarus, Toovey — and the next player
Roger’s response to the Lazarus and Toovey controversies was revealing.
He was not necessarily arguing that the concessions made to either player were wrong.
His concern was what happened the next time.
If there was a legitimate reason why Lazarus’s 130-point penalty should be reduced to 99, that reason should be identified and incorporated into the rules. Every future player satisfying the same conditions should then receive the same treatment.
The same principle applied to Toovey. If there was a legitimate reason why his circumstances warranted reducing the points that would otherwise have resulted in suspension, define that circumstance and make the concession available to every player who subsequently qualified for it.
The individual decision therefore became evidence.
If it revealed something wrong with the existing rules, fix the rules.
If it revealed a legitimate circumstance that had not previously been anticipated, incorporate that circumstance into the rules.
Either way, the system became better.
But not a system without judgement
Roger was not arguing for a completely mechanical judiciary.
His letter makes that clear.
Under the Super League system, the judiciary retained discretion to alter a penalty where it considered the circumstances of a particular case genuinely unusual. As far as Roger knew, that discretion had not been used during the Super League season.
The distinction is important.
His objective was not to eliminate judgement.
It was to prevent routine decisions from depending unnecessarily upon individual judgement — while retaining discretion for the genuinely exceptional case.
Consistency was the default.
Departure from it needed a reason.
Who cares what the system is?
Another surviving set of Roger’s notes from 1998 approaches the same issue from a different direction.
At the top of the page he posed a simple question:
Players cared. They wanted less time spent travelling to and attending hearings, equal treatment and a safer game.
Coaches cared. Judiciary appearances interfered with training; they wanted their players treated fairly and protected from dangerous play.
Chief executives cared about the time consumed by judiciary matters and the treatment of their players.
Financial managers cared about the cost of solicitors, witnesses and travel.
Supporters wanted confidence that their team was being treated equally. They also wanted the game’s best players playing rather than injured or suspended.
And the media?
Roger’s assessment was characteristically dry:
“As many opportunities as possible to create controversy.”
There is humour in the line, but the exercise itself is revealing.
Before judging whether a system was working, Roger was asking what the different people affected by it actually required from it.
Don’t fix the decision. Fix the system.
The surviving judiciary papers stretch from the original Super League proposal in November 1995, through its presentation and development in 1996, to Roger’s defence of its underlying principles in 1998.
Together they provide something more interesting than a claim about who devised rugby league’s judiciary.
They provide a small window into how Roger Cowan approached a problem.
Start by defining what you are trying to achieve.
Identify who is affected.
Separate the problem from the personalities involved.
Design a process rather than relying upon good intentions.
Build incentives into that process.
Anticipate objections.
Allow for exceptional circumstances.
And when the system produces an outcome that exposes a weakness, don’t simply correct the outcome.
Learn from it.
Change the system.
Then apply the improvement consistently to everyone who comes next.
It was an approach Roger applied repeatedly during his years at Panthers — to organisational structures, financial controls, strategic planning and football administration.
The judiciary happens to leave behind an unusually clear documentary trail showing that approach at work.
There is also a certain symmetry to the story.
In the early 1970s, Roger tried to suggest there might be a better way to administer rugby league’s judiciary.
He was told to sit down.
More than twenty years later, he was finally invited to develop the idea.
And when the new National Rugby League had to choose between two fundamentally different approaches, 18 of its 20 clubs voted for the system that had grown from that proposal.
For Roger, however, winning that argument was never quite the point.
The system still had to work.
And if it didn’t, the answer was not to abandon the principles behind it.
It was to find out why — and make the system better.
From the Panthers Passion Politics Digital Archives
The surviving documents behind this story provide an unusual opportunity to follow the development of Roger Cowan’s thinking about the rugby league judiciary — from his original proposal, through its presentation to Super League, to his response when he believed the principles behind the system were being compromised.
November 1995 — The Original Judiciary Proposal
Roger Cowan, 24 November 1995
Roger’s original working paper setting out the objectives of a proposed Super League judiciary system, its procedures and safeguards, and the problems it was intended to overcome. The document also includes his early consideration of replacing suspensions expressed solely in weeks with a points-based system.
The presentation prepared from the earlier working paper, distilling the proposal into its principal elements for consideration by Super League. It shows how the more detailed November proposal was developed into a practical model for discussion and implementation.
These working notes approach the judiciary from another direction: who is affected by the system, and what does each group need from it? Roger considers the interests of players, coaches, chief executives, financial managers, supporters, administrators and the media.
Written during controversy surrounding the judiciary in the first NRL season, this five-page letter explains Roger’s concern that the system being implemented had departed from a fundamental principle of the Super League model: consistency should reside principally in the rules and procedures rather than depend upon individual decisions. The letter discusses the Glenn Lazarus and Geoff Toovey cases and explains how Roger believed apparent anomalies should be used to improve the system.
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This was another technique Roger encouraged in the decision-making process throughout Panthers — this took various forms and names depending on the specific circumstance. One was use deBono’s “Six Hat Thinking” where the Black Hat was engaged to argue against the idea. Using the process developed by Mike Basch of Federal Express, there was a section title “Things We Must Overcome” where the challenges were listed and anything that “killed” the diea identified. ↩︎
In Round 1 of the 1998 unified season Brisbane played Manly in Brisbane. Bill Harrigan was the referee. Early in the match Harrigan sent Toovey to the sin-bin for dissent about a decision. In the last 30 seconds of the game John Hopoate was sent of for referee abuse. Wtin seconds Toovey was also sent and the charge was also abuse. ↩︎
People who worked with Cowan, or dealt with him through rugby league administration over the years, saw the anti-rugby league tag very differently.
Greg Mitchell, rugby league general manager at Parramatta,1 was a contemporary of Cowan during the NSWRL days. They attended many meetings together.
If there was some issue facing the game at the time, Roger always had a paper to present to provide a new perspective. He was certainly always current and relevant in terms of rugby league issues.
David Gallop says the fact that Cowan was on the Board of Super League is evidence of his reputation as a leader among football club CEOs.
I’ve always found him to be a deep thinker about rugby league and how to improve the game. For instance, his role in the judiciary concept and the amount of written material that he put together in relation to that – shows that he was very interested in the future of rugby league.
Roger Cowan was the original architect of the judiciary system introduced by Super League in 1997 and subsequently adopted by the NRL. In a 2003 paper, academics Ian Dobinson and David Thorpe described the system as a “benchmark or exemplar for how sports … should deal with on-field violence”.
Cowan says the way the rugby league judiciary worked had long been a problem in his mind.
Even back in the early seventies, when I was on the NSWRL executive committee, there was always controversy about the way the judiciary worked. Often there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the decisions, and some teams appeared to be getting more favourable treatment than others. One night I decided to suggest an improvement to the system.
Bill Buckley was the chairman at the time. I waited till general business, then stood up and said,
“I want to make a suggestion about the judiciary system”.
Buckley said,
“Sit down, Mr Cowan, you’re not here to talk about judiciary”.
“But I just want to suggest an improvement.”
“Sit down, Mr Cowan or leave the meeting. You are out of order”.
That was it. He was going to throw me out of the meeting rather than listen to a suggestion. The culture of rugby league was always pretty closed in its early days. There was that inner circle, and they were fixed in their ways. It was very much a closed environment for ideas. It was an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kind of atmosphere. “We’ve been doing it this way since nineteen hundred and nothing …”.’ It took around twenty years for it to change.
At a Super League meeting one night, we started talking about judiciary, and I said, “I’ve always had a passion for judiciary, I’d like to write a paper on it.” They said, “Terrific! Go ahead, do it”. It was such an open and participative environment. Everyone worked together in a great spirit of cooperation to get things done.
I wrote a proposal, and we worked on it as a team. There were a number of modifications, and it came into operation in time for the commencement of the Super League competition. When the NRL competition started there was great debate about which system to use for judiciary – the Super League or the ARL system. They agreed to use the Super League system, but to my horror and frustration they started to use it incorrectly. It was going back to being more like the ARL system. Fortunately, someone must have seen what a mess they were making of it and made the necessary changes.
Cowan says his original system was refined by the input of others on the Super League planning group, and since then there have been some minor modifications but the basic principles remain the same. Thorpe and Dobinson agree that the previous NSWRL judiciary procedure was viewed as arbitrary and inconsistent. Their research also found that it ‘was not written down anywhere and varied from chairman to chairman’.
The NRL system was also adopted by the Australian Football League at the beginning of the 2005 season. In an article in a sports law journal, The Commentator, Andrew Stops, a partner in Piper Alderman’s Dispute Resolution Group, Melbourne, made the following comment:
The tribunal system is a great credit to the AFL. It is transparent, predictable and flexible enough to deal with a wide variety of incidents that can and do occur in our national game.
Beyond the Book: Roger’s original judiciary papers survive, providing an unusual opportunity to follow the way he approached the problem — from defining the desired outcomes to designing the system and later defending its principles. Read: Don’t Fix the Decision. Fix the System.
At the time he was interviewed for the book, David Costello was CEO of ClubsNSW, having previously held the same role with the Leagues Club Association. He had a long association with Roger Cowan. He laughs at the suggestion that Cowan was “not a rugby league man”.
I don’t believe that myth. Roger is an absolute supporter of rugby league, I’ve seen it personally, in the support that he extends to junior rugby league and so many other areas.
I think more than anything else, he’s encouraged better professionalism on the football club side of things – as opposed to the leagues clubs side. I don’t believe that Roger ever had anything but absolute regard for rugby league, and the need to promote it and propagate it. But he was also very mindful of the costs associated with supporting a professional rugby league team. He would have liked the football club to be able to fully fund rugby league at some stage, given the pressures that we’re now seeing with government taxation levels.
So, to suggest that he’s not passionate about it – that’s a joke.
Roy Masters says Roger Cowan’s ‘anti-rugby league’ tag is paradoxical.
There were many times that he had to pull himself away from rugby league, because people were saying he was too hands-on. He played rugby league. He’s always been fascinated by the game and quite a few times he was involved at the administration level.
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Greg Mitchell left Parramatta Eels in 2005 and joined the NSW Rugby League Western Academy. ↩︎
The perception that Roger Cowan was against rugby league was built up through the seventies, as he battled to bring the registered club and the football club under one administration.
Barry Hubbard was on the executive of the registered club through those years.
There was the football committee and our board, and there was very little liaison between them. The football committee called the board the “kings in their castles”. Roger was always up against it because everybody knew he was determined to get hold of football. He once told the board executive, “We should cut the head off rugby league”.
It was a remark that would come back to haunt Cowan. He did not remember the particular occasion, but acknowledged that, when particularly frustrated by the divided administration, it was quite possible he had said something like it.
I used to say that if we were not careful, rugby league would send us broke.
They [the football committee] would give us a budget, and when it came time to pay the bills at the end of the year, the amount would be double. To them there was no limit – they would just spend, didn’t care where it was coming from.
The other thing that I always said – and I’ve never backed away from it – is that the number one priority is to make the registered club successful. Rugby league has to run second. If you reverse the priorities you end up with nothing, not even a team. Western Suburbs came close, and Norths failed to take their place in the fourteen team competition. The Newtown club – with all its traditions – died completely.
Expressed that way, Cowan’s priorities could easily be interpreted as placing rugby league at the margins. His argument was almost the reverse. If the registered club was to provide continuing support for football, its own financial strength had to come first. In his view, weakening the source of the funding would ultimately weaken rugby league itself.
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.
In 1983, Newtown1, one of the original rugby league clubs, with a debt of $1 million and no money to pay its players, was forced to fold. In a similar financial position, Western Suburbs — also one of the rugby league’s foundation clubs — was only saved by legal action. It struggled for many years before amalgamating with Balmain in the late 90s.
Sydney Morning Herald 27 Sep 1983 — click image to enlarge.
Cowan’s own memories of the days when the Penrith club was unable to pay its players had steeled his convictions.
The dispute always made me think of the fable of the goose that laid the eggs of gold. If the goose is treated badly there are no more eggs.
Yet the belief that not enough money was put into rugby league is a big part of the anti-rugby league tag. Merv Cartwright took what he needed for football, because he believed he could, but he was not the only person who saw things that way. In their evidence at the Inquiry, both Greg Evans and Dennis Coffey said that Cowan was not as supportive of football as they would have liked. Both spoke of their passion for football and their love of the team.
There was, however, an important distinction between Cowan’s influence as chief executive and the authority of the Board. Cowan could advise and recommend, but decisions about the level of financial support provided to football ultimately rested with the directors.
That raises a question not explored in evidence presented to the Inquiry. If directors believed football required greater financial support, they had the capacity to propose it and, if they commanded a majority on the Board, to approve it.
When Ian Temby suggested to Coffey that he ‘reckoned the leagues club was mostly there to support the football club and the football team’, Coffey agreed. He said that it would not surprise him if management was prepared to collude in a reverse takeover by amalgamating with clubs that would take control of rugby league out of Penrith’s hands.
Roy Masters does not agree that Roger Cowan could have secured more premierships by providing more money.
Rugby league premierships are extremely hard to win. Look at Cronulla.2They came in the same year as Penrith, and they’re still waiting for their first one.
Putting more money in does not necessarily help. Penrith put more money in in 98, when Royce Simmons was coach, and didn’t win. They didn’t in 2003, with John Lang, and that year they won. There are many elements to winning a premiership.
Being the type of person that he [Cowan] is, he probably took the view that if you build a tremendously successful licensed club, you are always going to have a cash cow that can support a football club.
Dennis Fitzgerald, who was the long-time CEO of the Parramatta Eels, has faced the same problems with funding;
If you put all the money into the game – and so many clubs have done that – their leagues clubs either have to close or they run into all sorts of financial problems. Newtown is a classic example.
Roger is a rugby league person, but at the end of the day, he is a visionary, a business person who realised that unless you’ve got something funding rugby league, you won’t have anything. He had a massive junior league to fund, as well as an NRL team – as we all have. You need a good profitable facility to generate the dollars to keep everything else running.
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Only tw years earlier, Newtown had played Parramatta in the 1981 Grand Final, leading 7-6 at half-time before losing 20-11. Few watching that game could have imagined that Newtown had only two season leftc in the first-grade competition. ↩︎
Masters was speaking well before Cronulla won its first premiership in 2016. ↩︎
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.
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 hadseen 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 affiliatesof 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.
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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. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
The five directors signing this ad would contend their aim was to protect the Penrith club. ↩︎
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;
Football fans are always looking for defining moments in their team’s history. A new coach arrives. A star player signs. A premiership follows. The story writes itself.
For Penrith, one of those defining moments was the appointment of Phil “Gus” Gould as first-grade coach in late 1989.
The most common version of this story is simple. Ron Willey departs, Gould returns, and within two seasons the Panthers are premiers.
A simple story that rings truth when told — but, really, the story is only partly told. And, so, does not hold the whole truth
The return of Phil Gould to Penrith, as coach, was undoubtedly one of the most significant decisions in the Club’s history. His influence on standards, preparation, selection and tactical innovation would prove decisive. Yet his appointment was not the beginning of Penrith’s rise. Rather, it was the culmination of a long organisational journey that had transformed the club over more than two decades but most dramatically during the seven years preceding his appointment.
Understanding why Gould succeeded at Penrith requires understanding the club he inherited.
Building a club capable of winning
When Roger Cowan became General Manager in 1965, Penrith was little more than an ambitious newcomer attempting to survive in Sydney’s fiercely competitive rugby league landscape.
The years that followed were devoted to building foundations — foundations of financial stability, sound governance, operational capability and an increasingly professional culture.
The club established administrative systems where few had previously existed. It strengthened its financial position, developed licensed club operations, invested in junior rugby league and gradually created an organisation capable of supporting elite football.
Many of these changes attracted little public attention — and some internal pain and conflict — yet each became another piece of the structure upon which future success would rest.
At the same time, a remarkable generation of local footballers was emerging.
From hopefuls to contenders
Tim Sheens deserves enormous credit for changing the direction of Penrith football.
His young side reached the club’s first semi-final in 1985 and, perhaps more importantly, changed what players and supporters believed was possible.
For the first time, Penrith expected to compete rather than merely participate.
When Ron Willey succeeded Sheens in 1987, he inherited a talented but still developing football team. Over the following three seasons he consolidated much of the progress already achieved — he also instilled a harder competitive edge — what many describe as ‘mongrel’ — that had previously been missing.
The Panthers’ consistency ramped up a couple of pegs, reaching the semi-finals again in 1988 before finishing second on the ladder in 1989, only to bow out in “straight sets” — a loss to Balmain (12-24) in Major Preliminary Semi-Final followed by a loss to Canberra (18-27) in the Minor Semi-final. Canberra went on to win the Grand Final over Balmain.
Willey’s contribution is often overshadowed by what followed, but history should remember that he coached Penrith through an important stage of its development. He inherited an emerging football side and left behind a genuine premiership contender.
By the end of 1989, however, there was a sense that the club had reached an important crossroads. Penrith’s next coach would need to be fully devoted to the Panthers and build upon the foundations already laid. In this late 1989 article Roger Cowan tells Roy Masters:
We need a coach who can devote four or five hours a day to our best juniors and then supervise the Panthers’ three grades in the evenings.
Sydney Morning Herald 28 Sep 1989 — click image to enlarge and read
While the club had become more competitive, the question was whether it could become the best.
The right coach at the right time
Phil Gould did not arrive to rescue a struggling football club.
He arrived at a club already pounding on the door. Today, you’ll often hear the expression “premiership window” — well, Gus joined when that window was wide open.
Sydney Morning Herald Headline 14 Oct 1989 — click image to read full article.
His coaching philosophy was uncompromising. Fitness standards rose. Preparation became more meticulous.
Selection became ruthless when necessary. Reputation alone offered no protection. Gould was prepared to make difficult decisions if he believed they improved the team, even when they involved respected senior players.
The controversial decisions surrounding Royce Simmons during both 1990 and 1991 illustrated both the personal cost and Gould’s willingness to place team performance ahead of sentiment. Those decisions were fiercely debated at the time but reflected the standards he expected throughout the organisation. Bound for Glory recounts Gould’s insistence that difficult decisions were necessary if Penrith was to push through that premiership window and transform from contenders to champions.
His greatest contribution may not have been introducing entirely new ideas, but demanding that every aspect of the football operation meet a higher standard.
Royce Simmons, in Hooked on League, describes some of the changes in 1990:
With Phil Gould at the helm … Weight coaches came to the club for the first time, there was a bit more money in the game and you were able to get away from work a little earlier and get fitter. The game was becoming semi-professional. … Phil was much more structured in his approach with not as much emphasis on skills but certainly a lot more education on how to play a more structured game.
Importantly, he inherited players capable of responding to those demands.
Greg Alexander, Royce Simmons, Mark Geyer, John Cartwright, Brad Izzard, Brad Fittler, Colin van der Voort, Col Bentley and others had largely developed together through Penrith’s football system. Gould refined them into a premiership side.
Just as importantly, he inherited a club capable of supporting elite football.
Behind the scenes, Penrith’s administration continued to expand sponsorship, strengthen finances, modernise marketing and deepen its connection with the wider district. As Bound for Glory records, the Club’s transformation extended well beyond the playing field, with new sponsorships, a new black playing strip for 1991, a rapidly growing marketing operation and increasing community engagement all reinforcing the confidence of an organisation entering the 1990s with growing belief.
The football team was improving because the club itself was improving.
More than one architect
It is tempting to view premierships through the lens of individuals.
Roger Cowan, Tim Sheens, Ron Willey, Phil Gould. Greg Alexander, Royce Simmons — each individually occupies an important place in the history of the Penrith Panthers that led to the 1991 Winfield Cup heading west to Penrith.
Yet focusing too heavily on any one figure risks missing the broader story.
Successful organisations rarely emerge because of one appointment or one season. They are built through hundreds of decisions, made by countless people over many years.
Roger Cowan with successive boards and countless staff built the organisation.
Tim Sheens rebuilt belief.
Ron Willey consolidated competitiveness.
Phil Gould delivered the final refinement.
Each stage depended upon the one before it.
The Final Piece
Looking back on those days, Gould’s appointment appears inevitable.
It was anything but.
It is now well-known that Steve Mortimer was a very strong contender for the Panthers role — and had he not been on a world trip at the crucial time discussions were being held, he may have landed the job. Sliding doors.
Had the Board chosen differently at the end of 1989, Penrith may still have remained one of the competition’s strongest clubs. Whether it would have climbed the final step can never be known.
What history can say with confidence is that Gould arrived at precisely the moment when Penrith was ready for him.
The Panthers did not become premiers simply because they appointed Phil Gould.
They became premiers because, after twenty-five years of organisational development, administrative reform, financial strengthening, football rebuilding and cultural change, the club had finally become capable of making the most of a coach of his calibre.
That is the story. It is a more complete story than the “Gould arrives — Panthers become premiers — Gould is the hero” popular narrative.
Phil Gould’s return was not the beginning of Penrith’s rise — it was the moment when years of patient preparation found their final catalyst.
The information night on 7th September 1998 was intended to provide clarity. Instead it intensified the debate. Media coverage and public reaction quickly hardened positions and narrowed the club’s options even further.
A front-page account of the meeting in The Western Weekender opens with a blatantly false statement:
In a historic announcement, the Panthers board of directors told the rugby league world that the mighty Penrith Panthers were to compete in the National Rugby League competition as an elite and single identity.
The article quotes Cowan as saying that ‘the stand-alone option was always the preference of senior management and the Board’.
Inside the paper in a double page spread, Mick Kelly lets rhetoric run riot. He quotes Mulock, the club patron — and its saviour, according to Kelly — as saying that Cowan and Levy’s efforts ‘have been skewed towards a merger with Parramatta’.
Editor’s Note: The way the meeting was subsequently presented in the local media is examined further in Following the Merger Debate, which reproduces the principal newspaper coverage from the period together with historical commentary.
Looking back, Cowan still found the events of that period difficult to understand. Why was Mulock so attached to arguments that were not reflecting the truth? Either he was being misinformed or his passion for Panthers was clouding his judgement.
After the public meeting and the subsequent newspaper coverage, feeling in the community was galvanised.
At the next board meeting, a resolution was passed that the club ‘cease all joint negotiations and stand-alone’. The Board also resolved to form a committee to promote the stand-alone position.
In Cowan’s eyes, this was a totally blinkered attitude. If there was to be a committee, its focus should have been to make sure Panthers was represented in the competition. Forming a committee with the sole purpose of supporting and propagating this one idea was ridiculous. It did not acknowledge the great danger that Panthers could be dropped from the competition.
The feeling at the time echoed the sentiments expressed by John Bateman in a Western Weekender front page story of 24 July:
Panthers brings too many aces to the table to be considered a weak link in the NRL competition.
He used the ‘largest junior league in the world’ as a reason why the club was safe from relegation, but, as we know, the junior league component was never a factor. Roger Cowan explained the NRL’s rationale for this.
The size of the junior league at any club is an asset to the entire league, whether it is centred around the Penrith club, or Parramatta, or any other club. If it is divided amongst a whole lot of other clubs, it evens out the distribution of junior talent. In other words, it would have been an advantage to the other clubs chosen for the competition for Penrith not to have ownership of its junior league. All that young talent would have been there for the taking.
We tried, very early in the process of setting criteria, to have junior league strengths given some recognition. There was no support for that proposition. Most clubs have believed that Penrith and Parramatta had an unfair advantage by having such large areas of juniors. They would hardly support something they saw as unfair being given an advantage under the criteria.’
Bateman and the other directors admit to being bombarded with information and reports from management during this period, so it is difficult to understand him making comments indicating the NRL would not dare discard the Panthers. Cowan says it was very frustrating to read this kind of statement, especially from someone like Bateman, who had been given all the facts.
Once the ‘Stand Alone’ Committee was formed,1 Cowan says he was absolutely appalled to hear Bateman, Mulock and other leading citizens of Penrith parroting the South Sydney line — that the NRL ‘would never drop us’.
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.
Souths were using the same strategy – make lots of noise, build emotion, get the people marching in the streets – and it failed them miserably. Souths had far more emotion and tradition on their side than Penrith, being one of the foundation clubs in 1908 and having an outstandingly successful record. They also had the support of some very high profile people, yet they were dropped. Even though they were eventually reinstated, the loss of a year’s competition was damaging. Ultimately the courts supported the NRL’s right to drop them from the competition. Souths is only there because News Limited softened its stance, just for Souths. Without that, Souths would have been gone forever.
But in 1998, the powers that be at Souths had chosen to ignore the determination of News Limited to have a fourteen-team competition. Panthers was doing the same. News Limited had already conceded its original position of 12 teams, and agreed on 14, but Cowan could see that they would not go to 16.
Despite his reservations, Cowan agreed to join the committee. Ron Mulock was also on it, as were Leo Armstrong and Terry Heidtmann. Former Panthers operations manager Tony Lackey attended the meetings, which he says were held every second Friday. ‘They were always bad, there was lots of conflict. It got very uncomfortable.’2
Cowan found the situation very difficult. To him, it was a counterproductive exercise.
At every meeting he [Mulock] was repeating word for word things that I had said in the boardroom a week earlier. Worse, he was using things I had said in those board meetings out of context.
In the committee meetings I continued to push the fact that the agreement between NRL and ARL was written in stone. We would not be in the competition unless we could take our place in that fourteen under the criteria. There was never any doubt of that in my mind.
David Gallop confirms that the NRL was serious about its selection procedure.
There’s no doubt that the criteria process was a genuine exercise. And even though Souths was readmitted, the High Court ultimately found that we had behaved legally in eliminating them in the first place.
And Penrith were down the bottom, if you like, in terms of the way they were running under the criteria, so there’s no doubt they were in trouble. They were facing a serious threat of being excluded from the 14-team competition.
By now, independent voices from very different perspectives were reaching much the same conclusion: Penrith had been in genuine danger of exclusion.
Journalist Roy Masters believes Penrith went perilously close to being eliminated. He adds that the Board’s stand-alone resolution had effectively closed any doors that might save the team.
In fact, if it hadn’t rained non-stop in Gosford in 1999, there would be no Penrith team today. My view is that Roger had an obligation as chief executive to put it to his board as an option, and he would have been culpable if he had not.
Soon after Super League and the ARL had agreed on the new 14 team competition, it became clear that thirteen teams were pretty much secure in their positions in the new competition. Through 1998, Penrith continued to monitor the statistics week by week, and nothing changed. They were still sitting at number sixteen. The two teams ahead of them were Adelaide and North Sydney.3
On 1 December 1998, News Limited and the NRL announced they were pulling their financial support for the Adelaide Rams. From Cowan’s perspective, the announcement brought both encouragement and disappointment. It moved Penrith into fifteenth position. But it also sent a message that decision would be made regardless of political noise. The South Australian premier and the CEO of News Limited in Adelaide appealed for Adelaide to stay in the competition. They were supported by leading businesspeople. It made no difference. In relation to the criteria, however, Penrith was still well behind North Sydney, as Cowan explains —
During the year leading up to the ARL/Super League merger, North Sydney had negotiated relocation to Gosford. Their ground and facilities at North Sydney were out of date. The demographics of their area had changed dramatically, greatly diminishing their supporter base. On top of this, the Central Coast of NSW is a very strong rugby league area and had been crying out for its own team for years.
I watched this strategy evolve with a sinking feeling. The relocation was a disaster for Penrith. The state and federal governments had combined to provide grants of $20 million to build a modern stadium at Gosford. Norths had made a brilliant move. Their claim to a place in the competition now seemed to be considerably strengthened. Panthers had no hope of leap- frogging them under those circumstances.
If we could have read the future, we could have all relaxed and there would have been no conflict. Our crystal ball was not that good, and I suspect that Norths’ crystal ball was not giving them much more at that stage.
The damage suffered by Norths weakened it position, and by the end of the year, Penrith might have been slightly ahead. However, the influence of the new ground at Gosford was an unknown factor. For Norths, it went deeper than points on the criteria. But as far as the world knew, in mid-1999, Norths was in an unassailable position.
By July that year, Panthers had no strategy in place other than to demand selection based on arguments that had already been discredited. The Footy Five, with their numbers on the Board, and supported publicly by Ron Mulock, had moved to gag all discussion. There was an orchestrated campaign to make sure that Panthers could not even discuss contingencies at board level. It is difficult to understand their actions. It can never be in a company’s best interests for a board to suppress discussion of a threat that could have enormous repercussions for the business.
Cowan feels angry looking back at that period and remembers how bad the outcome might have been.
Had Norths survived, both Souths and Penrith would have been eliminated. Penrith would have had no bargaining power, and we would have been forced into a takeover by Parramatta or a year fighting alongside Souths for reinstatement. Having two clubs fighting for re-instatement would have probably hardened the resolve of the NRL to let the courts decide. Otherwise, it would have been signalling that the whole strategy of using criteria to reduce the number of teams was just a farce. The court, which ruled for the NRL against Souths, would inevitably have ruled the same way with Penrith.
Through all this, there were the thousands of members who had no idea of what was going on behind the scenes. I wonder how they would have felt when they suddenly found that they had no team playing in the top competition?
By the middle of 1999, the position appeared bleak. The contingency planning had ceased, discussions with Parramatta had ended, and the Board had committed itself to a stand-alone strategy. Having exhausted every practical option available to it, Panthers could do little more than wait for the NRL’s decision.
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Well before this Stand-Alone Committee was formed the Panthers Marketing Team had started work on boosting those categories in the Criteria where Panthers was struggling — home game attendances, gate revenues and sponsorship income. Concept had already been planned, budgeted and were already active. The Our City, Our Team campaign was financed secretly by Panthers as it needed to be a grass roots campaign demonstrating the support of the community for the Club — neither the Board nor the Stand Alone Committee were made aware of this. ↩︎
Other members of the committee were Tony Ferguson (who chaired the meetings), Phil Morehead (from Panthers advertising agency), Max Cowan (Panthers Marketing Team). ↩︎
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.
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.
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.
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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. ↩︎
“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. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
