Major Player: John Bateman

John Bateman OAM
Photo: Western Weekender 2018

John Gerard Bateman OAM

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

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

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

Role in the Narrative

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

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

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

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

Background

Profession: Solicitor

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

Community Leadership:

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

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

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

Appointment to the Panthers Board of Directors:

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

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

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

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

Relevance to Events Described

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legacy

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

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

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

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

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

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Editorial Note

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

Bringing Phil Gould Back to Penrith

Success rarely begins with the final appointment

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.

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.

Beyond the Book: Phil Morehead recalls an earlier example of Panthers combining football, marketing and promotion of the wider district — the unusual story of how PENRITH CITY came to appear on the Panthers jersey in 1988.

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.

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The Cost of a Good Story

Part 35 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion

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

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The information night on 7^th 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.
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Other members of the committee were Tony Ferguson (who chaired the meetings), Phil Morehead (from Panthers advertising agency), Max Cowan (Panthers Marketing Team).
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See Beyond the Book — Survival Becomes a Numbers Game . ↩︎

← Part 34 · All Parts · Part 36 →

Commentary and Contributions

The Criteria

Part 30 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

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.

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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.
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“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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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. ↩︎

← Part 29 · All Parts · Part 31→

Commentary and Contributions

Major Player: Royce Simmons

Royce Michael Simmons OAM

Rugby League Player, Coach, Mentor, Ambassador

Over more than forty years Royce Simmons has beome one of the most enduring figures in Penrith Panthers history, as player, captain, premiership winner, coach, mentor, ambassador and community leader. His player and coaching statistics alone can’t paint his true portrait or explain why generations of Panthers supporters speak of him with such affection and respect.

Royce represents something beyond football. His determination, humility, loyalty and connection with the community reflects the culture Panthers spent decades trying to build. As the club evolved from perennial battlers into premiers and one of Australia’s leading sporting organisations, Royce Simmons became its most recognisable human face.

Few individuals have become so closely woven into the identity of a sporting club.

Role in the Narrative

Royce Simmons occupies a unique place within Panthers Passion & Politics because his involvement spans many of the defining periods of the club’s history.

He first appears as one of the emerging players who would become central to the football transformation initiated during the 1983 Strategic Reset. As captain, he became the on-field leader of a club that was consciously reshaping its culture, systems and expectations. The success of those reforms ultimately culminated in Penrith’s first premiership in 1991, with Royce scoring two tries in his farewell match.

His importance to the narrative does not end there.

Returning as head coach, Royce led the football club through one of the most turbulent periods in rugby league history. The Super League conflict, the introduction of competition criteria, financial pressures and the difficult rebuilding years all form major themes within this series. Throughout those challenges, Royce provided continuity, stability and leadership at a time when the organisation faced extraordinary uncertainty.

Royce through leadership, example and an unwavering commitment to the club became one of the constants in the Panthers story.

More broadly, Royce represents one of the central themes running throughout Panthers Passion & Politics: that lasting organisational success depends as much upon culture and character as it does upon talent or strategy. Repeatedly, teammates, coaches and commentators describe him not simply as a champion footballer but as the embodiment of what it meant to be a Panther.

Country Beginnings

Born on 2 May 1959 in the small central western New South Wales town of Gooloogong, Royce grew up immersed in country sport and the values that accompanied it — hard work, resilience, mateship and community. Rugby Union initially occupied much of his attention and he represented NSW Country at under-16 level before turning his focus to Rugby League. After playing senior football for Cowra and Canowindra, he travelled to Sydney seeking an opportunity in first grade.

Trials with St George and South Sydney failed to produce a contract, but the Panthers coach, Len Stacker, got a tip about Simmons from former Parramatta teammate Barry Rushworth. It was a good tip – and would prove to be one of signings in the club’s history.

Growing with the Club

Royce arrived at Penrith in 1980 when the club was still searching for both consistency and identity. Success remained elusive and Panthers were still regarded by many as one of the competition’s easy-beats.

As Panthers undertook the organisational reforms that occurred in late 1983, Royce emerged as one of the players who best reflected those changes — in fact he played an influential role in developing those reforms, and in ensuring Tim Sheens changed his plans and stayed to coach the Panthers.

Initially playing at lock before establishing himself as the club’s first-choice hooker, he became captain in 1983 and quickly developed a reputation for leading through actions rather than words. While representative honours followed—including ten State of Origin appearances for New South Wales and ten Test matches for Australia—his greatest contribution was arguably the standards he set within the club itself.

Phil Gould would later declare:

Royce Simmons is the heart and soul of this club.

That description has been echoed repeatedly by teammates, coaches, journalists and supporters.

The Embodiment of Panthers Culture

Within the story told throughout Panthers Passion & Politics, Royce Simmons represents something more significant than an outstanding football career.

The Panthers of the 1980s were intent on turning the club around through building a new organisational culture. The cultural values were being developed throughout the club, from the Board and administration to coaches, staff and players.

His leadership displayed the standards the club’s administrators and coaches were working to establish throughout the organisation.

John Cartwright later reflected:

Royce was our glue. He held the whole thing together.

Greg Alexander described him as:

The toughest bloke I ever played with. He never took a backward step.

Mark Geyer perhaps captured his influence most simply:

Royce taught us what it meant to be Panthers.

Those comments describe a footballer and, more importantly, a cultural leader.

Two leaders – both knock-about blokes — photo: Craig Golding (SMH)

A Fitting Farewell

Royce captained Penrith through 1980s during the Club’s transformation, an played in its first Finals Series appearance, first Grand Final appearance and first Premiership.

His two tries in the 1991 Grand Final helped secure Penrith’s first premiership and provided one of the most memorable farewells in Australian rugby league history. He retired immediately afterwards, having helped transform the club from competition battlers into premiers.

Royce’s celebration after scoring his second try in that grand final win is one of the most iconic images in Panthers’ history … and perhaps in Rugby League history.

Returning to Lead

Retirement from playing did not end Royce’s service to Panthers.

When Royce returned to coach Penrith in 1994, he inherited a club coming out of a very unstable era where club culture had drifted badly. As well, the Club was entering another period that would prove difficult to navigate.

His coaching tenure coincided with one of the most turbulent periods in rugby league history. Super League divided the game, the salary cap reshaped recruitment, and Panthers entered another rebuilding phase.

Despite those challenges, Royce guided the club to finals appearances in both the 1997 Super League competition and the 2000 NRL season. He remained fiercely loyal to his players during difficult years and was reluctant to publicly criticise individuals when results deteriorated.

At the end of the 2001 Season his tenure as Panthers coach finished but the impact he had on the Club had not. Following the 2003 premiership victory John Lang, Panthers premiership-wining coach, credited Royce Simmons with some of that victory praising the work he’d done creating the core of that winning team.

Simmons’ value as a leader during his coaching tenure should not be measured by win-loss statistics but through the stability, integrity and belief be inspired.

Beyond Football

Despite having some successful coaching stints away from Penrith — Hull (1992-94), Wests-Tigers (2003-10), as Assistant to Tim Sheens, and St Helens (2011-12) — he never lost touch with Penrith.

He has remained ~~one of~~ the Club’s most respected ambassadors, supporting a stack of community initiatives and continues to show the younger Panthers what it means to be a Panther.

Following his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease in 2021, Royce transformed personal adversityinto public advocacy. Through fundraising walks and awareness campaigns, he has helped raise both funds and understanding for dementia research while continuing to inspire the broader community.

His appointment as Brand Ambassador for The Royce retirement communicty reflects the qualities that have endeared him with Panthers supporters and the wider rugby league community — down-to-earth honesty, humour and humility.

Perhaps his greatest achievement has been the initiation and development of the Royce Simmons Foundation which is dedicated finding a cure to dementia and supporting those wh are affected by it. His Big Walks have very quickly eastablished themselves as legendary, just like the man hwo has choreographed them You can get involved through donation or participation — for more see https://www.roycesimmonsfoundation.com.au/.

Background

Born: 2 May 1959, Gooloogong, New South Wales

Profession: Rugby League player, coach. Ambassador.

Panthers Involvement
• First Grade Player (1980-1991)
• Club Captain (1983-1990)
• Head Coach (1994-2001)
• Club Ambassador

Representative Honours
• New South Wales (10 State of Origin matches)
• Australia (10 Tests)

Honours
• Penrith Panthers Player of the Year — 1981, 84, 86, 87 (renamed Merv Cartwright Medal in 2006)
• John Farragher Award for Courage & Determination — 1982, 85 (shared with Matt Goodwin), 89.
• 1991 NSWRL Premiership
• Panthers Life Member (1992)
• Panthers Team of Legends (2006)
• Panthers Hall of Fame (2016)
• Australian Sports Medal (2000)
• Centenary Medal (2001)
• Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) (2025

Relevance to Events Described

Royce Simmons presence throughout the Panthers, Passion & Politics series is significant. He features in:

As captain during the Club’s 1983 transformation and strategic reset.
Evolution of the Club’s culture — especially as Coach when his leadership positively impacted the connection between licensed club and football club teams.
Simmons was instrumental in the development of the “Five-by-Five” focus on local talent and leadership.
Super League – helped guide the Panthers through this tumultuous era, including the rationalisation trauma.

Related Themes:

Football Club · Leadership · Culture

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Editorial Note

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

Super League — When Panthers Faced the Community

Leaving the ARL and signing with Super League was one of the most difficult decisions in the Club’s history. It was difficult for the Board, Cowan, the management team, the players, and the staff of both the football and licensed clubs.

It was also difficult for the members, fans and the local community. The extreme reaction of some individuals reflected the depth of feeling that existed within parts of the Panthers community. Many saw the decision as a betrayal driven by greed.

The administration building of the Club had faeces smeared across the glass entry, Roger Cowan was sent an envelope filled with nail clippings, and at the next Penrith Panthers home game fans displayed a sign that read “Betrayed”.

More sober reactions included critical letters and phone calls to the club and some staff resigned in protest. A Penrith Press telephone poll also reported overwhelming opposition, with around 90% of respondents opposing the decision.

Cowan’s response to the divisive environment was to schedule a forum in which the reasoning behind Panthers’ decision would be presented to club members and fans who could then seek answers to any questions they may have.

The meeting took place in Reactor 1 — the very popular nightclub downstairs in Panthers World of Entertainment — on 28^th May 1995.

It was a Sunday morning. It was game day — the Panthers were scheduled to play the Gold Coast at Penrith Stadium. Reactor was a very dark, enclosed area – large enough to comfortably hold over 500 people. Only a few hours earlier, more than 500 people had probably filled the room. The air and even the carpet still carried the unmistakable signs of a busy Saturday night.

Several hundred people attended to hear why the Board had taken Panthers into Super League after previously declaring its loyalty to the ARL. It was tense, you could feel the anger about the decision and anger that members were not consulted.

Penrith Press Back Page 26 May 1995 – click image to read articles

As I write this, I’m reminded of the Panthers song Go the Mighty Panthers. Its opening line is:

Tension’s running high, it shows on nevery face.

While those attending were overwhelmingly against the Super League decision, the opposition was emotional but not hostile … and there were pockets of support for the Club’s move. The presence of some players perhaps took the edge off the sentiment and those present listened intently to Cowan’s explanation of the Club’s position.

The final word came from Club Captain, John Cartwright who spoke of his own doubts about the move, doubts persisting up until the meeting which had finally convinced him he’d made the right decision and so had the club.

Even the supporters who had displayed the “Betrayed” banner left expressing support for the Club’s position.

The forum did not eliminate disagreement, but it appears to have reduced some of the anger by allowing members to hear directly from those responsible for the decision.

It would, however, be wrong to suggest that the community’s opposition had completely turned to support. Some supporters maintained a deep sense of betrayal by Panthers’ decision, others, after reflecting on the events, reached a different conclusion. One letter published in the Penrith Press in early 1996 acknowledged discomfort with the way Super League had unfolded, yet concluded that Panthers’ administrators had acted out of concern for the club’s future rather than self-interest. Steve Wharton’s letter was published in the Penrith Press on 12 March 1996, in part he said:

I am still not comfortable with what happened. But through it all I saw only concern for what was best for Panthers, when it came to the efforts of our team and administrators.

Steve Wharton’s letter is not evidence that community opinion had swung decisively behind the Board. Rather, it is a reminder that community opinion was more varied and nuanced than later accounts sometimes suggest.

Continue Exploring the Super League Story

These companion Historical Context articles examine different aspects of Panthers’ decision to join Super League:

The Panthers Move — How the Penrith Panthers came to join the new competition.
The Real Money Fight — The corporate battle that lay behind the Super League War.
When Panthers Faced the Community — How Panthers’ decision affected its members, supporters and the wider Penrith community.

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

Project Updates

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Super League — The Real Money Fight

For most rugby league supporters, the Super League War is remembered as a bitter struggle between the Australian Rugby League and Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited.

That description is accurate—but it tells only part of the story.

Looking back three decades later, it is easy to view the conflict simply as a battle over the control of rugby league. At the time, however, respected financial journalist Robert Gottliebsen argued that the game itself was not the real prize. In an article published in the Australian Financial Review in April 1996, he described Super League as just one front in a much larger corporate struggle involving Australia’s emerging pay television industry, the nation’s two largest telecommunications companies, and two of its most powerful media empires.

In Gottliebsen’s view, rugby league had become one of the weapons in “the real money fight.”

A Bigger Vision

The origins of that conflict can be traced back several years before the first Super League contracts were signed.

Around 1992, Rupert Murdoch and Frank Blount, the Managing Director of Telstra, began discussing the enormous potential of cable and satellite technology. Their vision extended well beyond television. They believed that broadband networks would eventually carry not only entertainment but also telephone services, banking, retailing, medical services, gambling and countless other forms of communication.

To pursue that vision, Murdoch suggested bringing Kerry Packer into the venture. The proposal became known as the PMT consortium—Packer, Murdoch and Telecom.

For a brief period, Australia’s two most influential media families appeared to be working towards a common future.

It did not last.

The Alliance Breaks Apart

As Australia’s telecommunications industry prepared for competition, Optus recognised the strategic value of Kerry Packer’s media interests and encouraged him to align with its own plans.

Murdoch, meanwhile, ultimately partnered with Telstra.

What had begun as a shared vision quickly evolved into competing alliances.

Telstra and Murdoch established Foxtel.

Optus assembled its own powerful consortium, supported by Kerry Packer and eventually the Seven Network.

Suddenly, the emerging pay television market had become a battleground between rival telecommunications companies, rival media organisations and rival strategic visions for Australia’s communications future.

Billions of dollars were now at stake.

Gottliebsen reported that Telstra’s own internal modelling suggested as much as $7–8 billion of corporate value could be affected depending on which side prevailed.

Why Rugby League Suddenly Mattered

Pay television needed something that could persuade Australians to subscribe.

Movies were important.

News was important.

But live sport was essential.

Existing broadcasting arrangements meant Kerry Packer’s Nine Network already held the free-to-air rights to rugby league. When Murdoch’s executives struggled to secure premium sporting content for Foxtel, creating a new national rugby league competition became a commercially attractive option.

From this perspective, Super League was far more than a football competition.

It became part of a much larger contest over subscribers, broadcasting rights, market share and ultimately the future of Australia’s communications industry.

This does not diminish the genuine rugby league issues that also existed. Questions about the game’s administration, its national expansion, club structures and commercial future were all real and important. However, Gottliebsen argued that these football issues had become intertwined with a much broader corporate struggle that most supporters could neither see nor fully appreciate while it was unfolding.

What It Meant For Penrith

None of these corporate manoeuvres were visible to most Panthers members or supporters.

They saw clubs changing sides.

Players signing confidential contracts.

Court battles.

Television cameras.

Public accusations of betrayal.

Behind those events, however, some of Australia’s largest corporations were fighting over far more than rugby league.

Understanding that broader context helps explain why events moved so quickly during 1995 and why the decisions confronting clubs became so significant.

For Penrith, the immediate question was never which media company would ultimately prevail.

Would Panthers still have a place in the highest level of rugby league when the dust finally settled?

That was the question management sought to answer in Part 29.

Continue Exploring the Super League Story

These companion Historical Context articles examine different aspects of Panthers’ decision to join Super League:

The Panthers Move — How the Penrith Panthers came to join the new competition.
When Panthers Faced the Community — How Panthers’ decision affected its members, supporters and the wider Penrith community.
The Real Money Fight — The corporate battle that lay behind the Super League War.

Related Themes

Football Club · Conflict

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Super League — The Panthers Move

Part 29 — Joining Super League begins with a deceptively simple statement:

“In May 1995 Panthers had resolved to leave the Australian Rugby League to join Super League…”

Read in isolation, it almost sounds like an ordinary administrative decision. In reality it followed months of uncertainty, strategic analysis and one of the most turbulent periods in rugby league history.

It would be easy for a reader to miss the nuance and significance behind that statement — it sounds almost as simple as resolving to change the club’s soft drink supplier.

The opening phrase is followed up with a hint that this was, in fact, a major decision and noting that Super League was a new competition established by News Limited.

Many simplify the establishment of this new competition as an attempt by Murdoch to attain the broadcast rights of rugby league for his pay television platform, Foxtel. This was true. Kerry Packer’s Consolidated Press held those rights but they were not being used — and it was commonly believed that the Packer deal did not represent the true value of the game.

It’s worth briefly doing a quick history — to take us up to that point in May 1995 when the Penrith Panthers made their resolution to join Super League.

Just over a year before Penrith’s resolution, in April 1994, John Ribot (Chief Executive Officer, Brisbane Broncos) sent Ken Cowley (Chief Executive, News Ltd) a report outlining the concept of a new structure for rugby league in Australia. This was followed up in May 1994 with discussions of the concept with some leading players.

By August 1994 News Ltd had moved well beyond an idea. It had developed an outline for an entirely new national competition. The main points of this outline were:

To establish an elite national competition (including New Zealand) between 12 privately owned teams. Up to 4 of these teams to be owned by News Ltd.
Superleague Ltd would get revenue from sponsorship, free-to-air and pay television rights, gate receipts and merchandising. New Ltd would receive a 15% management fee and the profit shared amongst the 12 clubs.
The 12 clubs would be:
- 4 based in Sydney
- 4 continuing teams — Brisbane, Canberra, Newcastle and Auckland
- New teams in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne

The greatest challenge was reducing eleven Sydney clubs (plus Illawarra) to four Sydney franchises. News Ltd proposed grouping clubs into sets of three and inviting them to jointly own a single Super League franchise.

For example: Wests, Parramatta, and Penrith could be grouped together and offered a franchise. Ownership would be split evenly between those clubs taking up the offer. The owner of the old club eg Penrith Rugby League Club Ltd would be entitled to 50% of its share of the new club, the other 50% would be offered directly to members.

Over the remaining months of 1994 there was considerable media speculation and News Ltd and ARFL Ltd executives held private discussions.

Following those discussions, Ken Arthurson (ARFL Ltd Chairman) and John Quayle (ARFL CEO) issued agreements to each of the 20 existing club aimed at securing their loyalty to the ARL for the 5 season starting 1995. All 20 clubs signed these agreements by November 1994.

On 6^th February 1995 News Ltd presented their proposal to the ARL — offering the ARL positions on the Super League Board as well as the ongoing rights to administer various rugby league programs.

On that same day Kerry Packer addressed the 20 clubs declaring his ownership of the broadcasting rights (free-to-air and pay television) until the year 2000. Part of this address was a threat to sue any club that joined a Super League competition. A short time later in February 1995 all 20 club signed another agreement — the so-called Loyalty Agreements — reinforcing those signed 4 months earlier.

Packer’s declaration made one thing abundantly clear. The dispute was no longer simply about rugby league administration. Rugby league had become the battleground in a much larger corporate struggle over broadcasting, telecommunications and pay television. Robert Gottliebson in an Australian Financial review article in April 1996 suggested this was a battle where $7 billion dollars was at stake.

By late March 1995, after having their momentum slowed by the reaction of Packer, the ARL and the club, News Ltd resolved to press on. In their eyes they had three strategic choices as shown in the table from Super League Case Study a 2003 research paper for Victoria University written by Robert D, McDonald.

News Ltd elected to take the third approach and start a “rebel competition”.

Their attack was on two fronts:

In late March, early April News Ltd launched an aggressive and clandestine campaign — a ”blitzkrieg” — to sign players and coaches for the rebel league.
Legal action commenced challenging the validity of the two agreements clubs had signed in November 1994 and February 1995.

The early targets for Super League were Brisbane, Canberra, Auckland and Canterbury. When news broke that players and coaches from these four clubs had signed with Super League, there was a flurry of signing activity from both Super League and the ARL.

Neither side approached the Penrith Panthers.

Here’s how the Super League clubs fell:

29 March — Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. Key players signed contracts. Two day later an 1^st April, Bulldogs CEO Peter Moore resigned his position on the Board of the NSWRL after aligning the club with Super League.

1 April — Brisbane Broncos. This is the date the Broncos defection broke publicly. Broncos CEO, John Ribot, left the Broncos to become CEO of Super League at around the same time.

1-2 April — Cronulla- Sutherland Sharks. The Sharks’ players were signed after playing the Western Reds in Perth on 31^st March.

2 April — Auckland Warriors. The players signed on this date. Coach John Monie had signed late in March. The Board signed the club to Super League on 20^th April.

2-3 April — Canberra Raiders. Following the news breaking on April Fool’s day, most of Canberra’s high profile roster signed.

Early April — Western Reds and North Queensland Cowboys.

During all this activity and publicity there were no communications, offers or invitations for teh Penrith Panthers — from either the ARL or Super League.

The management team at Panthers was very concerned by the silence and paid close attention to every piece of information that could be found about what was happening on both sides of the battle. A comprehensive critical analysis of the situation facing Panthers was undertaken — despite the fact reliable information was scant.

The analysis process was steered by Outcomes Thinking. Rather than beginning with today’s problems, Outcomes Thinking began by defining what success would look like several years into the future. (See Beyond the Book: Education by Experience.)

The highest-level outcome was simply:

“In the year 2000 Panthers is competing in the highest-level rugby league competition.”

Our first step towards survival was to ensure that at least one of the two sides were interested in having Panthers in their competition.

Super League represented the best opportunity to create that interest — among the reasons for this conclusion was that their team list, to date, only included two Sydney-based clubs, Canterbury-Bankstown and Cronulla-Sutherland.

There was also a strong belief Panthers had a compelling case that News Ltd had not yet fully appreciated — while the ARL had had many years to understand the strengths of the Penrith club.

Cowan requested a meeting with Ken Cowley and John Ribot. At that meeting he let them know Panthers hadn’t made any decisions about its future and that we’d be an important club to either Super League or the ARL. In particular, rugby league in Penrith had strong financial backing from the largest licensed club and it also ran junior rugby league with the strongest participation anywhere in the country.

The meeting achieved its immediate objective. Super League, which until then had shown no interest in Penrith, quickly reassessed the club’s strategic value. Negotiations followed and an agreement was reached within days.

That brings us back to the opening of Part 29, where the Penrith Panthers formally resolved to become the eighth club to join Super League.

Continue Exploring the Super League Story

These companion Historical Context articles examine different aspects of Panthers’ decision to join Super League:

The Real Money Fight — The corporate battle that lay behind the Super League War.
When Panthers Faced the Community — How Panthers’ decision affected its members, supporters and the wider Penrith community.
The Panthers Move — How the Penrith Panthers came to join the new competition.

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Joining Super League

Part 29 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion

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

Start · Reader’s Guide · All Parts

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.

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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
↩︎
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.
↩︎
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.
↩︎
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. ↩︎

← Part 28 · All Parts · Part 30→

Commentary and Contributions

The 1983 Strategic Reset — Did it Work?

The companion article explained how Panthers changed the way it thought. This article asks the obvious next question: did that change in thinking actually change the club’s fortunes?

One of the earliest outcomes of the strategic reset was the appointment of Tim Sheens as Manager-Coach

The “Coach” part of Sheens’ role delivered quickly, the team performance in the 1984 season was in stark contrast to the seasons before. His impact was roundly recognised and applauded by all, including his peers.

But the “Manager” part of the Manager-Coach role was more strategic, as was the role of the Five by Five Committee.

The stated goal — to have five local juniors named as Kangaroos within 5 years — was really about something far more valuable: to shift the Club’s trajectory.

Was it successful?

Let’s look first at that main goal.

Player	Representative Team	First Chosen	Penrith Junior
Royce Simmons	Australia	1986	No
Greg Alexander	Australia	1986	Yes
John Cartwright	Australia	1990	Yes
Mark Geyer	Australia	1990	Yes
Brad Fittler	Australia	1990	Yes
Brad Izzard*	NSW	1990	Yes
Steve Carter	NSW	1992	No
Graham Mackay	Australia	1992	No

*Brad Izzard had represented NSW in 1982 — before the strategic reset.

The Committee narrowly missed its stated target. More importantly, however, the effort reflected a broader ambition—to create a football club that the district could believe in and one capable of producing representative players consistently rather than occasionally.

Winning Games

The following table shows the results of the regular season games for the 10 seasons before and after the 1983 strategic reset. The Panthers won almost twice as many regular-season games during the decade following the strategic reset as they had during the preceding decade.

	1974-1983	1984-1993
Games Played	228	228
Games Won	66	123
Win Percentage	29%	54%

Attack and Defence (Tries Scored & Tries Against)

The following table shows the tries scored and conceded during the regular season for the 10 seasons before and after the 1983 strategic reset. Note: I’ve used tries rather than points here because the value of the try changed from 3 to 4 in 1983.

The Panthers attack improved by 4% which is inconsequential. More importantly defence improved by 38%.

	1974-1983	1984-1993
Games Played	228	228
Total Tries Scored	614	638
Total Tries Against	872	539
Tries For – Tries Against	-258	+99

The improvement in defence is extremely important – Strong defensive records are widely regarded as one of the defining characteristics of premiership-winning teams. Defence speaks volumes about the character and culture of a club – the change represents a distinct shift in both for the Penrith Panthers.

Overall, the Panthers’ tries-for-and-against differential moved from –258 to +99—a turnaround of 357 tries. In other words, they went from consistently being outscored to consistently outscoring their opponents.

Final Ladder Position

The numbers above suggest a big difference in performance of Penrith team before and after the changes put in place between the 1983 and 1984 seasons.

As to the trajectory. The graph below shows the finishing position of the Panthers for the 10 years before (red) and the 10 years after (blue) the late 1983 changes.

There is a distinct and positive difference between the two decades in being compared.

A further consequence of the change …

The following table shows average home crowd for regular season games, comparing the 10 seasons before and after the 1983 strategic reset. Crowds increased by 20%.

Home Games	1974-1983	1984-1993
Played	114	114
Total Attendance	871,042	1,047,261
Average Crowd	7,641	9,187

Conclusion

No single committee, coach or governance reform can claim sole responsibility for the transformation of Penrith Panthers during the 1980s. However, the evidence strongly suggests that the strategic reset undertaken in late 1983 fundamentally altered the club’s direction. The Five by Five Committee did not achieve its headline target exactly as written, but the broader ambition—to reshape the football club’s future—was overwhelmingly realised.

Related Themes

Football Club · Innovation

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John Gerard Bateman OAM

Role in the Narrative

Background

Relevance to Events Described

Legacy

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Editorial Note

Success rarely begins with the final appointment

Building a club capable of winning

From hopefuls to contenders

The right coach at the right time

More than one architect

The Final Piece

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Part 35 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion

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Part 30 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion

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Royce Michael Simmons OAM

Role in the Narrative

Country Beginnings

Growing with the Club

The Embodiment of Panthers Culture

A Fitting Farewell

Returning to Lead

Beyond Football

Background

Relevance to Events Described

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Editorial Note

Continue Exploring the Super League Story

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A Bigger Vision

The Alliance Breaks Apart

Why Rugby League Suddenly Mattered

What It Meant For Penrith

Continue Exploring the Super League Story

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Continue Exploring the Super League Story

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Part 29 of 70 — Original Chapter: Chapter 10: A Narrow Escape from Football Oblivion

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Winning Games

Attack and Defence (Tries Scored & Tries Against)

Final Ladder Position

A further consequence of the change …

Conclusion

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