By October 2002, the threat of Penrith being forced into a joint venture with another NRL club had passed. The proposed Penrith–Parramatta merger, considered during rugby league’s rationalisation period, was no longer a live issue. Yet it featured prominently in the increasingly bitter campaign surrounding the Panthers Board election.
The election was for the Board of the Penrith District Rugby League Football Club (PDRLFC), rather than the Board of the wider Panthers Group. Under the club’s governance arrangements at the time, those elected to the Football Club Board would automatically secure seats on the 15-member Panthers Group Board, whose election followed approximately two weeks later. The outcome therefore had implications extending well beyond the administration of rugby league.
Why had a proposal that was no longer on the agenda become such a central issue in the contest? What did the competing accounts of those earlier events reveal about the divisions within Panthers, and how were those accounts used to influence members? The election also raised contemporary questions about the relationship between the Football Club and the wider Panthers Group, the influence of senior management and the direction of the club’s continuing amalgamation strategy.
This Digital Archive brings together 19 contemporary documents published or circulated between September and October 2002, including newspaper reports, opinion columns, election advertisements and public statements representing different perspectives on the dispute.
The collection includes the Western Weekender’s prominent “Board Wars” coverage of 27 September, statements by Roger Cowan and Ron Mulock, competing election advertisements, reports concerning the involvement of club employees in voting, and subsequent commentary about the role of the media in the campaign.
The documents are presented principally in chronological order, with a register identifying each item and explaining its context.
These documents are reproduced as historical records. Their inclusion does not imply endorsement of the claims, allegations or opinions expressed within them.
Related Reading
This archive accompanies Chapter 18, The Footy Five Make Their Play, from the original publication. This is presented in Parts 61–65 of Panthers, Passion & Politics. It also provides contemporary material relevant to the Beyond the Book article The Footy Five — A Name That Rewrote the Story.
A removed section from the original Chapter 20: The Reaction to a Fruitless Inquiry.This section originally appeared at the end of Chapter 20, taht is at the Part 73 of The Series. It reproduces the allegations examined by Ian Temby and his conclusions on each, as presented in a report to the Panthers Board by the Club’s Group General Counsel, Steve Bowers.
The material has been removed from the main narrative because its level of detail interrupts the account of the Inquiry and its aftermath. However, it provides an important opportunity to examine the Commissioner’s findings directly, including both his criticisms of the Club’s governance and his conclusions concerning Roger Cowan.
Shortly after the report was tabled in Parliament, Steve Bowers prepared a report for the Panthers Board incorporating Temby’s conclusions on each allegation. The relevant extracts appear below.
Allegation (a) The Board of the Club aborted the March 2002 Board election because of an apprehension that the election, if carried through to conclusion, would or might lead to loss of power by the existing Board;
Finding (a) (Temby Report: paragraph 5.29)
My conclusion is that most of the then eight members of the Board believed that if the election results were declared there would be a change in Board composition, largely because of the ticket. That was a worry to most of them, and a greater worry than the fact of electioneering; it is clear to me that most were more concerned about outcome than principle. There was, however a factor of greater significance, namely the serious doubt which arose as to whether members of Port RSL and ClubNova were entitled to vote. The Board was put in the invidious position of having conflicting legal advice, and it preferred to follow the Boon advice which was that members of those two Clubs could not vote. In part the preference for that legal view arose from strong distrust of management by the majority of the Board, and in part it arose from the fact that Boon’s advice was palatable, it was seen as justifying the decision to cancel the then current election. However, the Board cannot carry too far the proposition that it simply followed Boon’s advice, because he was at pains to stress, both at the meeting on 21 March and when he gave evidence before me, that he did not advise cancellation of the election.
Allegation (b) Constitutional changes were then effected with a view to, or which had the effect (direct or indirect) of, enabling proxies to vote, enabling Club employees to vote, and precluding all Club ordinary members from directly voting in the Board election held later in 2002, and subsequent elections;
Finding (b) (paragraph 5.30)
There were certainly constitutional changes effected in September 2002, and certainly they had an effect that was very much intended. It was to preclude all Club ordinary members, including those from amalgamating Clubs, from directly voting for all Board positions. The Board which after long and often bitter discussion put up constitutional amendments did so precisely in order to entrench the rights of existing Penrith Club members, the consequence being that those members could indirectly (through the Football Club elections) choose nine out of 14 members of the expanded Board, and members of amalgamating Clubs could have a say in the choice of only the remaining five. This diminished the rights of the latter group significantly. It is not now the case that all Club ordinary members can, in any meaningful way, directly vote in Board elections. They are thus precluded from doing so, at least in effect, and have been since September 2002. The effect of the constitutional amendments was to enable Club employees to vote indirectly in the Club elections. I do not think that was intended, it was an accidental, although important, consequence. The question of proxies, it emerged from the evidence, was one of no significance.
Allegation (c) The Club, by its Board and/or Mr Roger Cowan, misled members of the Clubs with which the Club had amalgamated between 1998 and 2003 as to the continuing voting rights of members of those Clubs;
Finding (c) (paragraph 7.16)
To summarise my conclusion, Cowan was authorised by the Board and did in fact make representations to members of amalgamating Clubs as to their continuing voting rights, namely they would have the same entitlement as members of the existing Penrith Club. As a result of actions taken by the Board, in full knowledge of what Cowan had done, those promises were broken. Each of the cancellation of the February-March 2002 election, and the constitutional change effected in September 2002, had the effect that members of amalgamating Clubs could not vote for the Club Board generally, and thereby disappointed their legitimate expectations. I repeat that no blame attaches to Cowan
Allegation (d) Mr Cowan misled the Board of the Club as to those voting rights;
Finding (d) (paragraph 7.17)
The fourth allegation is that Cowan misled the Board of the Club as to those voting rights. My conclusion is otherwise. At least in this context, to mislead is to deceive in a deliberate manner. Cowan did not do so. He fought hard to deliver on the promises he had made, and he was pursuing the interests of all members, not just those from the Penrith site. Most members of the Board, in contrast, saw their principle allegiance as being to the Penrith members. Cowan’s approach, as to amalgamations and voting questions, is to my mind distinctly preferable to theirs.
Allegation (e) Information as to the remuneration package of Mr Cowan, and the financial dealings between Phyro Holdings Pty Limited and the Club, and benefits flowing to Mr Cowan and that company whether directly or indirectly from the position he holds and from those financial dealings, have since at least 1 June I994 been withheld from the Club’s Board and its members;
Finding (e) (paragraph 9.27)
That allegation is made out. The Board generally did not know how or in what amount Cowan was remunerated until the hearings of the Inquiry, although members of the Executive did. Board members generally, including members of the Executive, did not know of the nature and extent of the financial dealings between Phyro and the Club, or the benefits flowing directly to Phyro and indirectly to Cowan, again until the hearings of the Inquiry. Naturally, Club members had no more information than did their Directors. The very large extent to which information was withheld from Directors is attributable to Cowan and his obsession with secrecy, and could not be justified on the basis of the very limited confidentiality provisions contained in the three Phyro contracts – see 8.11-8.13 above. It is clear that Cowan got his way in blocking proper information flows because of his strength of personality and, on the Board’s side, a lack of vigour in asserting controls. Recent Panthers history shows that Cowan played a key role in getting rid of those Directors who sought to control him.
NOTE: In the report the Club’s Counsel advised the Board that Mr Temby has concluded this information was “withheld” in the sense that it was simply not communicated nor conveyed. He did not accept the submission from the Club that “withheld” meant to keep back where there was an obligation to provide.
Allegation (f) The Club is, and has since at least 1 June 1994 been, to a large extent run by and for the benefit of Mr Cowan and his close associates, including members of his family and Phyro Holdings Pty Limited, and not in good faith for the benefit of all members of the Club;
Finding (f) (paragraph 12.17 – 12.19)
I do not find that Cowan’s involvement with the Club, on balance, has been against the best interests of members generally. He has done it and them much good. Nor do I find that he has done other than seek in good faith to benefit those members. Disbenefit to them will arise only if and to the extent that, because financial affairs cannot be worked out in a confident fashion between Phyro and the Club, the company gets away with more than it is entitled to. It is likely that the extent of that – if it happens, and it may not – will never be known.
Cowan cares passionately about the Club, and it is clear he wants to benefit its members – all of them including members of amalgamating Clubs. He cares more about those members than he does about Club Directors. Because of his obsessive drive for secrecy, his attitude to accountability is one which caused grave problems, and largely led to the current Inquiry.
I find Allegation 6 – fairly described by Counsel for the Club as “the most serious allegation” – not to have been made out.
Of the allegations against Cowan, only one was found to have been made out. It concerned the withholding of information about his remuneration and the nature and extent of the Club’s financial dealings with Phyro Holdings. Although members of the executive knew about Cowan’s remuneration, the full Board did not. Nor did directors generally know the extent of the financial arrangements involving Phyro.
Cowan responds that trust was a major issue with him at the time.
If I believed that I could trust everyone on the Board, it would never have got as bad as it did.
But I was being attacked publicly and quite viciously by Ron Mulock and it was obvious that he was getting confidential information from someone on the board. So I continued to insist on the confidentiality clause in my contract. There was no legal requirement to disclose these matters to the full board or to the members. The criticism by Temby was that I had insisted on confidentiality.
My guess is that if you asked Terrence Lynch or Ian Temby what they earned last year they would quite rightly tell you to mind your own business. Most people prefer confidentiality of their earnings. When I was insisting on confidentiality, it was just as legal for me to do so as it still is for both Terrence Lynch or Ian Temby. It was perfectly legal.
In August 2004, following the circulation of an issues paper indicating that Ian Temby might make findings of corrupt or improper conduct, Panthers commenced proceedings in the Supreme Court to clarify the limits of his powers under section 41X of the Registered Clubs Act.
As described in the preceding Part — Part 72 — the Government responded by introducing legislation that would have extended the powers of special inquiries, including inquiries already underway. The proposal encountered strong parliamentary opposition and ultimately failed to become law.
Grant McBride had one final present for Panthers leading up to Christmas 2004. Ian Temby had heard final evidence in the Inquiry on 27 October. Roger Cowan was the last witness. All that he, Panthers’ management and the Board of Directors could do now was wait. Their information was that Ian Temby would deliver his report to Ken Brown, the Director General of Liquor and Gaming on 12 December.
Had this happened, however, state politicians in NSW would have been off on their Christmas break, and most members of the parliamentary press gallery would have packed up for the year. Influential media personalities were also about to break.
We can only imagine what might have been going on within the halls of power in Macquarie Street up to that point. By then, the evidence presented during the Inquiry must have given the Government some indication that its most serious allegations against Cowan were unlikely to be sustained. They did not need Ian Temby’s report – their own legal experts would be keeping them well in the loop. The Supreme Court decision had dampened the potential for headlines that would do more damage to Cowan, or Panthers – headlines which would have justified the enormous expenditure in time and money over the previous six months. The ruling prevented Temby from expressing an opinion that, for example, a certain matter might have been evidence of corruption. Not much perhaps, but a skilled journalist would have been able to create negative headlines
Cowan describes the tight spot Michael Egan and Bob Carr were in with an analogy:
The government had chartered and expensive boat to trawl the waters for big fish. Now they were returning to the harbour with a small jar, only quarter filled with fingerlings
But the government might still salvage something from the failed fishing trip if it could get hold of the report before the promised release date. Minister McBride could report to parliament that he had received the report and frame his speech in a manner that would spark the sensational headlines they craved. The early release would deny Panthers the opportunity of preparing a media release which reflected the full report, and which could have been authenticated by those journalists who pursue the truth. The surprise tactics would prevent leading broadcasters, including Alan Jones and John Laws, getting in first with the facts and spoiling a good story.
Sensational headlines would also divert the media from some very pertinent questions – not the least, what a wasted exercise had it been, and how much did it cost? Were the allegations investigated before the Inquiry was called?
Government press releases had been distributed and all was ready for the final announcement before the Christmas break.
McBride’s presentation concentrated on Temby’s criticisms of Cowan’s secrecy and the Club’s governance, without mentioning that the Commissioner had rejected the most serious allegation against him. The timing gave the Minister an opportunity to establish the initial public interpretation of the report before Panthers could examine it and respond.
Towards the end of question time on 9 December, the final day of sittings for 2004, McBride made his play for the headlines. The Hansard record has him stating:
Allegation 6 reads, in part: The Club is, and has since at least 1 June 1994 been, to a large extent run by and for the benefit of Mr Cowan and his close associates, including members of his family and Phyro Holdings Pty. Limited, and not in good faith for the benefit of all members of the Club.
Ian Temby’s report says:
I find Allegation 6, fairly described by Counsel for the club as “the most serious allegation” – not to have been made out.
Part of the Commissioner’s conclusion was:
I do not find that Cowan’s involvement with the club has, on balance, been against the best interests of members, generally. He has done it, and them, much good.
In the face of that report, Grant McBride was able to stand up in Parliament, look at all the members who had not yet had the opportunity to read the report, and tell them something completely different. He told the House that Temby found that:
The club has, to an extent, been run for the benefit of Cowan and Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd since at least June 1994.
He went on to say,
The Temby report shows the type of unhealthy practices that have developed in parts of the New South Wales industry, bring discredit on the vast majority of decent clubs … highlighting the need for reform in the clubs industry and in club practice and governance.
How the minister could get it so wrong is a mystery. But it is an error that fits neatly if one accepts the theory that the real intention of the inquiry was to discredit Cowan and Panthers – and ultimately the club industry. Truth and factual evidence were totally passed over by the minister. Because of the timing of the distribution of press releases, and the minister’s speech, most radio and television news headlines reflected only McBride’s very skewed interpretation of the report.
Fortunately for Panthers, there were a lot of members of parliament who had followed the story and developed sympathy for Panthers and Cowan. As soon as they realised what was happening, one of them actually left the chamber and made a quick phone call to Steve Bowers. A hastily organised trip to Sydney, a faxed copy of Temby’s report, and some urgent media releases by Panthers media manager Rob Weaver were able to dampen the government’s unfair advantage, slightly.
In his breakfast show on 10 December 2004, Alan Jones said:
I just don’t know if the government is aware of the damage they have done.
Jones commented that the government had been crying poor about not having enough money to maintain the state’s schools,
… but we can spend one and a half million dollars… trying to find out that Roger Cowan’s a crook.
He called it a spiteful inquiry into Panthers, simply because of opposition to the poker machine tax.
He quotes Temby’s words that “Cowan seeks only to benefit members” saying,
The sadness is – if not the disgrace – that we all knew that before the inquiry began.
In the early stages of research for this book, Grant McBride’s office was contacted several times with a request for an interview. There was no response. In late 2006, just before the book was published, the minister was approached to ask about the manner in which the report had been released, and whether he felt he had misled parled parliament in his interpretation of Mr Temby’s findings.
Quite late in the research, rumours also surfaced that DGR investigators advised the government, some time before the Inquiry was called, that they had completed their investigation and recommended that no further action be taken. Mr McBride was asked for a comment on both issues, by certified mail. McBride’s office acknowledged the first inquiry and advised that the matter was being examined. No substantive response had been received by the time the manuscript was completed.
In his speech to the parliament, the minister also made reference to the Supreme Court ruling by Justice Hamilton, insinuating that it had prevented the Commissioner from doing his job.1 As a minister of the crown, one could expect that the minister understands the judicial process, and that he had read Justice Hamilton’s judgement. It said in part,
The Commissioner’s function is to investigate. He is to gather material. He may make findings of fact … The Commission is primarily an investigative body whose investigations are intended to facilitate the actions of others in combating corrupt conduct.
It was also the judge’s view that the usefulness of the report was not ‘compromised by a lack of findings in terms of corruption or impropriety. The Director will still have the benefit of the investigative procedure, together with findings as to particular factual matters …’
Fifteen months later, Minister McBride’s contention that the ruling somehow obstructed the government was perpetuated by the DGR when director-general Ken Brown finally released his report on the Inquiry. It had taken until 1 March 2006 – the day of his retirement from the position.2
The delay in the release of the report was almost farcical, except that for the people waiting in limbo, there was absolutely no humour. It said, in part:
The Director considers there is sufficient evidence to support complaint proceedings against the Club under … the Registered Clubs Act 1976, which provides:
“A club shall keep correct accounts and books in respect of the financial affairs of the club showing the particulars usually shown in accounts and books of a like nature.“
However, and after careful consideration of the potential financial implications facing club members and the community in general, together with the remedial action taken by the club, the Director has decided not to commence complaint proceedings in the Licensing Court of NSW.
Was there any truth in this communication to the club?
In 50,000 pages of Inquiry documents, there is not slightest shred of evidence that the Club had not kept correct accounts. The DGR itself has never issued a complaint nor has there been any qualification by auditors that reflected on the standards of accounting at Panthers. The only criticism arising from the Inquiry was that Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd had not kept the Club informed accurately about the amount it was owed under its contracts.
There is an enormous question left hanging here. The government mounted an inquiry to find evidence that could be used against a club or a club official – and enable the appropriate measures to be taken. It cost millions and caused disruptions for a year. Now the Director was saying ‘there is sufficient evidence to support complaint proceedings’– but that he had decided to take no further action.
It just does not add up!
A compliance notice was served on the club secretary the same day, requiring the Club to comply with certain provisions in the Act. The notice was also to be placed on the agenda of the next board meeting. The Club would be monitored and audited by special inspectors during 2006, it said. The DGR followed the compliance notice with a Notice of Determination, which gave a more detailed account of Mr Brown’s deliberations.
Brown mentioned what he described as the
regrettable comments of individuals associated with the club who loudly and publicly contended that Mr Temby had not found either the club or Mr Cowan guilty of corrupt or improper conduct.
He also stated that,
Mr Temby was prevented by the decision of Mr Justice Hamilton of the Supreme Court from making any such findings.
Cowan was appalled at this statement;
There was no restriction on Temby’s powers to find and report evidence. The Supreme Court decision only restricted his power to express a personal opinion regarding corrupt or improper conduct.
Strictly speaking, Ken Brown’s remark about regrettable comments was correct. The individuals should have loudly and publicly contended that “Mr Temby had not found any evidence that suggested corrupt or improper conduct.” It seems to be playing with words rather than facts but it would have been more accurate
On 19 April, then Panthers group CEO Glenn Matthews responded to Mr Brown’s notice on behalf of the group board:
… you appear to criticise the club’s action in bringing the Supreme Court proceedings concerning the conduct of Mr Temby’s inquiry. Those proceedings were successful. The principle of the judgement was to confine Mr Temby’s report to findings of fact and preclude the expression of his merely personal opinion.
The letter continued that Temby had found no dishonesty in the dealings between either Cowan or Phyro Holdings and the Club. Further, Matthews said that if Brown was suggesting that the Supreme Court proceedings precluded the Commissioner from such findings, he was incorrect.
The Board and senior management were incensed by the Notice’s claim that during their investigation in 2003, the department’s special inspectors had not received ‘full and forthcoming assistance’ from the Club. ‘Had the club co-operated fully from the outset’, said Ken Brown, ‘there might not have been the need for me to commission Mr Temby to conduct an inquiry.’
To Panthers’ management, Brown’s explanation appeared to shift responsibility for the Inquiry onto the Club itself, despite the failure of its most serious allegation against Cowan. A classic case of “blaming the victim”.
Matthews’ view on the level of cooperation with the DGR is clear:
From the day I started at Panthers more than twenty years ago, Roger always insisted that we give full co-operation to all the department’s inspectors. And with a club our size, they were often in there. I think even the DGR inspectors – if they were allowed to say it – would tell you how open we always were with them.
Matthews described the suggestion that Panthers didn’t co-operate as ‘untrue to the point of offensiveness’, pointing out that the Club received no complaints from the DGR at the time, nor any compliance notices.
The suggestion of non-co-operation was never put to any club witness appearing at the Temby Inquiry, especially in the context of Mr Cowan having asserted “full” co-operation with department inquiries at all times.
Matthews remembers instances where the Club had legal advice that the DGR was requesting information that went beyond its powers to request. But, in order to co-operate fully with the investigations, they did provide the information, he said.
Ken Brown’s Notice of Determination also said that some matters emanating from the Inquiry were being referred to other government bodies, such as the Licensing Court, Taxation Department and the Department of Commerce. Matthews acknowledged this statement, but in his response letter concluded:
It remains the club’s impression that it was subjected to the 41X inquiry not because departmental inquiries suggested corrupt or other improper conduct as to the matters of the Terms of Reference for that inquiry, but because those inquiries did not tend to confirm the rumours reflected in those terms and that such an outcome was unacceptable to the powers that be.
The Instrument of Appointment notice inaugurating the Inquiry first appeared on the DGR website in May 2004, listing the six allegations against Roger Cowan and Panthers. Temby delivered his report to Ken Brown on 8 December that year. The allegations remained on the department’s website as apparently unanswered accusations until Brown released his notices on 1 March 2006.
Had the Temby report provided evidence that supported proceedings against Cowan or Panthers there is no doubt there would have been headlines to that effect immediately in the Sydney Morning Herald. It probably also would have been proudly and loudly displayed on the DGR website along with the allegations.
Such a prize eluded the government.
Ian Temby had found only one of the allegations against Cowan to be ‘made out’ and it related to activities that were not illegal and could not possibly have led to any action against Cowan or the Club by any government or legal body.
Although the allegations against Cowan and Panthers remained on the DGR website for almost two years, Temby’s findings never appeared there.3
Immediately following the release of Temby’s Report, Steve Bowers prepared a report for the Panthers Board of Directors. This report included a section showing Temby’s findings against each of the initial allegations. This summary is available inWhat Temby Actually Found — Steve Bowers Reports to the Board.
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In Penrith Rugby League Club Ltd v Brown [2004] NSWSC 932, Justice Hamilton held that section 41X of the Registered Clubs Act 1976 did not authorise the Commissioner to make definitive findings that a person had engaged in corrupt or other improper conduct. The judgment did not prevent the Commissioner from making factual findings, including findings that might reflect adversely on individuals. See The Series Part 72 — The Panic Amendment for details on how the Labor Government attempted to push through an amendment to Section 41X to retrospectively change the rules of the Inquiry. ↩︎
Ken Brown, Director-General of Gaming and Racing, issued his determination on 1 March 2006, more than a year after the Temby Report was delivered. The determination and Panthers’ response are discussed here as recorded in the original manuscript. A complete copy of the determination has not yet been located for independent verification. ↩︎
Max’s note: I am unsure about this final phrase. I think Temby’s Report was eventually available on the department’s website. It was hard to find. I think the digital copy I have of the report was downloaded from that website. ↩︎
When Panthers’ legal team, led by Bernard Coles QC, decided to challenge the scope of the Temby Inquiry’s powers in the Supreme Court, Roger Cowan was uncomfortable.
I could see the sense in what the Club was doing, but from the start I was concerned that a successful outcome by the Club would be misinterpreted as a win for me. It was my strong belief that the result would actually mean very little to me.
There were two counsel assisting on behalf of the Department of Gaming and Racing (DGR): David Staehli was to focus on the allegations against Cowan and Vicki Hartstein’s brief covered issues relating to the Club.
The crunch came came to when Vicki Hartstein, counsel assisting the Inquiry, presented submissions proposing findings of improper conduct against several Panthers directors. The Club’s lawyers argued that such findings would exceed the powers conferred on the Inquiry by section 41X of the Registered Clubs Act 1976.
She submitted a report which criticised a number of people, especially some directors on the Panthers Board. It focused on the cancellation of an election for the Board, and on changes in the Club’s constitution that had, in effect, served to circumvent the Registered Clubs Act.
Panthers’ legal team, led by Bernard Coles QC and barrister Terrence Lynch, took their objection to the Supreme Court on 17th August 2004.
On 8 October, Justice Hamilton in the Supreme Court ruled in the Club’s favour and made a direction restraining Ian Temby from making a finding of corrupt or other improper conduct by any person in respect of Penrith Rugby League Club.1
Justice Hamilton’s decision took reputation into account. If a person is found corrupt after an inquiry, the label sticks. That person may later face court and be found not guilty on the basis of fuller evidence, yet a reputation has been permanently damaged.
Independent MLC Peter Breen cited the case of Nick Greiner, whom he calls ‘arguably the most honest Premier in the past 50 years’. Within hours of Ian Temby’s finding of corruption against Greiner, headlines blared: ‘Greiner Corrupt’. The subsequent overturning of the finding by the NSW Court of Appeal could never erase that headline.2
Throughout the Temby Inquiry the government appear to want the headlines.
Cowan had opposed the strategy of going to the Supreme Court, believing it would be of great benefit to the Footy Five and potentially damaging to him.3
In fact, if Vicky Hartstein’s submission had been adopted, from Cowan’s perspective it would have introduced one tiny element of justice into the whole nightmare, because her report was much kinder to him than it was to the Footy Five.
Vicky Hartstein was highly critical of the directors for not honouring agreements, for cancelling an election and for their action in instigating certain changes to the constitution of the Club. She contended that the directors had acted in self-interest, and not in the interests of the Club as a whole when they aborted the March 2002 election, and when they changed the constitution. She said they had a duty to take into consideration the promises they knew had been made to members of other clubs – promises they had authorised Cowan to make on behalf of the Club.
She was scathing in her criticism of the Footy Five in relation to broken promises to amalgamating clubs.
She dismissed the allegations by some of the Five that Cowan had misled the Board of Panthers, the members of Panthers or the members of other clubs. She acknowledged that his authority, granted originally by a resolution of the Board, to make offers to other clubs, had never been revoked, and that the terms of those offers were clearly set out in the memorandum of understanding for each club, all of which the Board also subsequently approved. She stated that Cowan and other members of senior management were genuinely concerned about the breaches but were overborne by the Board.
In fact, there was only one criticism of Cowan in the entire document.
She claimed that it was inappropriate that he, and others in the management team, had relayed information to the Board about the number of members who had voted.
Those who chose to misinterpret the decision of the Supreme Court and use it to continue the attacks on Cowan included Ron Mulock, the Minister for Gaming and Racing Grant McBride, and the director general of the DGR, Ken Brown. It remains unclear whether they actually believed what they were saying, or just echoing the sentiments of a government which needed to justify its actions. McBride would demonstrate his position on the matter very clearly by his skewed report to parliament on Temby’s final report. Cowan says they should have given it a bit more thought before jumping to such a silly conclusion.
Going to the Supreme Court was of no benefit to me. The whole purpose of the Inquiry was to rake around for any evidence that could be used to show that I was corrupt or dishonest. No Supreme Court ruling would ever change that.
If Temby had reported any evidence of corruption or dishonesty incriminating me, the department would have charged me before the ink was dried on his report. That was the whole purpose of the exercise. What they all insist on ignoring, in a blatantly unfair way, is that there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption.
The Supreme Court challenge made no difference to me. But it did stop some other people from being negatively labelled.
If the government had been confident when it drafted the 41X legislation it was now facing a problem. A fishing expedition with the powers of a royal commission should be catching something. Now, months into the Inquiry, there had still been no revelations of dishonesty or corruption. The Sydney Morning Herald headlines were helping their cause but they lacked substance when readers looked beyond the headlines.
Now it was starting to appear that Panthers’ counsel might have a valid argument to present to Justice Hamilton. There must have been some frenzied activity in the government corridors in Parliament House around this time. Between 17 August and 1 September – exactly two weeks – legislation was drafted and put before parliament.
On 1 September, before the Supreme Court handed down its judgment, Grant McBride introduced the amendment bill in the NSW Legislative Assembly. The Government presented it as part of a broader package of measures to strengthen accountability in registered clubs. However, one provision would expressly permit certain special inquiries to report findings of corrupt or improper conduct — precisely the power being challenged in the Supreme Court.
The timing raised an obvious question: was the Government attempting to circumvent an adverse decision it anticipated from the Court?
The member for the Upper Hunter, George Souris, accused the government of introducing the amendments with a sinister agenda. He believed that the original 41X legislation was failing to uncover corruption that the government was looking for, and that the amendments were designed to find another way.
At the time, Souris was Shadow Minister for Gaming and Racing and had a particular interest in the Inquiry. He was regarded by many in the registered clubs industry as a strong supporter of the sector. He is respected in the club industry as a person who deals straight, tells it like it is and supports the clubs. This is in stark contrast to the general perception of his government counterpart, Minister McBride.
George Souris led the opposition’s response. His opening remarks expressed his displeasure that he had only just received a copy of the bill, which he said ‘smacks of an ambush’.
Looking back on the debate Souris remarks:
Initially I was a bit lost at sea, because it suddenly appeared. It happened a great deal faster than is usually the case. There wasn’t the usual build up with new legislation. You have time to examine it, and you get all the consultant briefs. All I really got was an emergency briefing from one of the lawyers. It was just unbelievable.
In 2004 Souris suggested to the House that the legislation was ‘specifically designed to give retrospective powers to the presiding officer of the inquiry presently under way in relation to Panthers Rugby League Club’.
The relevant transitional provision extended the proposed new powers to inquiries already under way, provided their reports had not yet been produced. This meant the amendment could apply to the Panthers Inquiry even though much of its evidence had already been heard.
The Government maintained that it was clarifying the powers of special inquiries. Souris and other Opposition members argued that it was retrospectively changing the rules for an inquiry already approaching completion.
Souris continued,
So these new laws would apply retrospectively to that almost completed inquiry.
He called the legislation ‘philosophically obnoxious’ and said it would deny natural justice to all those witnesses who had already appeared. He said the witnesses had received legal advice and given their evidence, in the knowledge that the inquiry was being conducted under existing parameters. These witnesses knew that their evidence could, in extreme cases, lead to charges being laid against them, but that they would at least be entitled to a fair trial. The proposed changes meant that their evidence might be used to publicly label them as corrupt long before they would be given a chance to demonstrate their innocence.
Once the limitations of the 2003 legislation became the subject of Supreme Court proceedings, the Government moved to change the rules. Its opponents saw this as an attempt to secure powers that could produce findings damaging to individuals’ reputations and to the club industry.
Souris says that the appointment of Temby in the first place, and the action of the government in almost panic mode introducing new legislation indicates how serious it was about the issues.
They were so blindly, madly obsessed. They were even prepared to introduce a further piece of legislation. But the fact that it was retrospective – that was really too much for us all.
What the Government could never have planned for was the crossbench opposition that the legislation triggered.
The Independents – and this is a feat rarely achieved – agreed to defeat the bill in the Upper House.
Now, remember that there are Greens up there and left-wingers – all of whom usually hate clubs and anything to do with them. But this legislation was beyond principle.
Also exceptional in the Parliament was the fact that every member of the Coalition spoke against the bill in the Lower House.
The member for Epping, Andrew Tink, called the amendments ‘incompetence at its worst.’ He asked whether the incompetence resided in the offices of the Premier and the Treasurer. He added that if the people in the DGR were left to their own devices, ‘they would know better than to bring in a rubbishy bill like this’.
Independent MLC Peter Breen said these new provisions were ‘a case of the punishment seriously outweighing the crime’. He noted that normal rules of evidence did not apply, yet such evidence could be used as the basis of published findings.
And once a person is labelled corrupt, that person is forever known in the press as “the corrupt Mrs Brown”, even though those allegations were never tested in a court of law.’
Breen added that the bill was ‘pure politics dressed up as law reform’.
The bill also contained provisions allowing the Government to recover certain investigation costs from clubs. In Panthers’ case, this could add $1.5 million to the $800,000 it had spent to that point. The injustice of it was not lost on many politicians.
It seemed the government wanted to send a very strong message to the big clubs – cop the tax quietly, stop criticising the government, or it will cost you very dearly indeed. In the worst possible scenario, a government with that sort of disdain justice could pluck allegations out of the air to bring against dissident clubs.
Any analysis of the allegations behind this Inquiry is a stark reminder of that possibility.
The government’s numbers ensured that the legislation passed quickly through the Lower House. Newspaper stories at the time said that it was expected to also pass through the Upper House with the support of the cross-benchers.
Minister McBride continued to maintain in the press that the bill was not retrospective.
Other Labor politicians jumped in. Around the time that Justice Hamilton handed down his ruling, Paul Gibson4 [Labor member for Blacktown] made a stinging attack on the Club in parliament, including a statement that Panthers had been bad for Penrith. Gibson used an example the large number of restaurants he had to choose from in the days when he himself was a Penrith footballer. One comment he made was:
Now, the club has been allowed to get so big … that it has traded most local restaurants out of Penrith.
Panthers responded with an ad in the local press put together by Panthers media chief, Rob Weaver. It said, in part:
Today there are 133 eateries in the Penrith local government area. In the early 70s, when Mr Gibson played with Penrith, there were fewer than 20
The ad went on to shoot down the rest of Gibson’s outrageous – and obviously unresearched – claims and accused the politician of ‘twisting the truth’.
When Panthers got wind of the government’s latest ploy, Steve Bowers told the chairman of Panthers that he would like to try to defeat the legislation. At first, it sounded a little Quixotic – like duelling with windmills – but there was no harm in giving it a go.
Bowers spoke about the bill to Peter Breen, who had been watching the Panthers case. Breen wanted assurances that Cowan really was as honest as Bowers claimed. If he was going to support the push against the legislation, he – and the other cross-benchers – would need to be sure. Bowers says:
The independents did not want to stick their necks out and later find out he was a crook. All I could tell them was my experience of Roger for the past 30 years, what I personally knew of the man, his integrity, and what he had achieved. Fortunately, it must have been enough.
They already had a commitment from Souris that the opposition would vote against the bill. There were 11 cross-benchers, and to defeat it in the Upper House, Bowers needed nine. The government only needed three. He spent three long days walking the corridors of parliament, greatly assisted by Breen.
Bowers phoned each of them to make an appointment. A couple gave a direct ‘no’.
John Tingle refused to speak to me, and had an assistant phone ClubsNSW to tell me not to call again.
Tingle had supported the so-called ’19 faceless men’ who had tried to buy the building of what is now Port Macquarie Panthers. He had attacked Panthers in the press and in parliament at the time.5
From his time on Lane Cove Council, Bowers already knew Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon.
She was brilliant – she attended the appointment with her research assistant and spent about 45 minutes. She was very willing to listen, and we knew that she would speak to the other two Greens.
He did not feel it was right to ask Rhiannon for a straight-out commitment of support, but did his best to explain about the legislation and its ramifications. He says she gave him an undertaking that she would call him if she was lobbied again, to give him an opportunity to respond.
As we spoke to each one, we found there was particular opposition to the fact that the legislation would be retrospective. They were also shocked to discover that it would overturn the Supreme Court ruling. All the cross benchers we spoke to seemed to have great respect for the judiciary, particularly in a case such as this’.
Most of them were also surprised that the Labor staffers who had talked to them about the bill had not mentioned the Supreme Court decision. They saw such ‘less than frank’ lobbying as quite unfair.
I spoke to David Oldfield on the phone and he was supportive. Jon Jenkins from the Outdoor Recreation Party was also very supportive and certainly opposed to the bill.
With the Greens that meant Bowers had six on side.
We spoke to Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes. Peter Wong listened, but he was non-committal.
I was often in touch with ClubsNSW. Of course, the Labor Party kept turning up the heat. They knew what we were doing, so they kept putting the bill on the list and then taking it off again at the last minute.
Bowers agrees with George Souris about the unique aspects of the response to this bill in the Upper House.
The cross-benchers come from such diverse positions, it is almost unheard of for them to unite to defeat legislation. But they treated the matter very seriously, and they gave it respect.
Terrence Lynch praises Bowers’ efforts in stalling the amendments.
There was absolutely no doubt of the government’s determination to get them through. The importance of that lobbying, and the time that Stephen spent in Macquarie Street cannot be underestimated.
After the inquiry was over, he wrote to each of those Independents personally to thank them for their consideration.
Grant McBride must have discovered the effectiveness of the lobbying of Bowers and Breen. September 2004 amendments were never tested in the Upper House. Bowers says it wasn’t that the legislation just died. It was put to death by a group of politicians united in their resolve to crush what was, at best, a very cynical exercise.
The government’s proposed amendments were never brought to a vote in the Legislative Council. Although they were not formally defeated on the floor of the House, Bowers believed the crossbench opposition had effectively ended their prospects.
It was never formally withdrawn, nor was it ever mentioned again.6
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In Penrith Rugby League Club Ltd v Brown [2004] NSWSC 932, delivered on 8 October 2004, Justice Hamilton held that section 41X of the Registered Clubs Act 1976 did not authorise a special inquiry to make definitive findings that a person had engaged in corrupt or other improper conduct. The Court did not prevent the inquiry from making factual findings, including findings that might reflect adversely on individuals. The final declarations were settled on 14 October 2004. ↩︎
The judgment of the appeal court was 2-1 in favour of Greiner. The justices were Chief Justice Murray Gleeson, Justice Lancelot Priestley and Justice Dennis Mahoney. Justice Mahoney was the dissenting voice. ↩︎
This bellief proved quite prophetic. In most post-Inquiry ccommentary referring to Temby’s findings on Cowan, there is reference to this Supreme Court judgement as if it somehow “handcuffed” Temby. It is never mentioned that Cowan had joined with the DGR and Temby as a defent opposing the claim by Penrityh Rugby League Club Ltd. ↩︎
Paul Gibson is an ex-rugby league Penrith player who was also on the football board in the days of Merv Cartwright. He was also one of the members of the ‘insidious football committee’ that was described by Roy Masters as treacherous and anti-intellectual. ↩︎
The Bill passed the Legislative Assembly on 26 October 2004 but stalled in the Legislative Council, where debate was adjourned on 28 October 2004. It remained on the parliamentary agenda until 13 September 2005, when it was formally discharged from the Legislative Council’s Business Paper. The proposed amendments never became law. ↩︎
Phil “Gus” Gould Image: Panthers 2016 Annual Report
Philip Ronald Gould AM
Few individuals have made a greater contribution to Australian rugby league, or played as many different roles within the game, as Phil “Gus” Gould. Player, captain, premiership-winning coach, State of Origin coach, football administrator and commentator, Gould has been one of rugby league’s most influential — and occasionally controversial — figures for almost five decades.
His relationship with Penrith Panthers has been particularly remarkable. Beginning his first-grade career at the club in the 1970s, he returned as coach in 1990 and guided Penrith to its first Grand Final and, a year later, its first premiership. Almost two decades after leaving, he returned again to help rebuild the club’s football operations, contributing to the foundations of another extraordinary period of success.
Yet Gould’s significance to the Panthers story extends beyond those achievements. His arrival as coach coincided with the culmination of years of investment in junior development, football administration and organisational reform. His success demonstrated what could be achieved when an exceptional coach inherited a club increasingly capable of supporting his ambitions.
His subsequent departure in 1994, following a difficult period for the football club, also provides an insight into the challenges that accompanied Penrith’s transition towards a more professional football operation.
Across three distinct periods, Gould was both a participant in and an important influence upon the transformation of Panthers. His story illustrates not only the impact of individual leadership, but also the importance of the organisational foundations upon which sporting success depends.
Role in the Narrative
Gould’s importance to Panthers, Passion & Politics centres on his return to Penrith as first-grade coach in 1990 and his role in converting the club’s growing football strength into its first premiership.
His coaching career began at Canterbury in 1988, where he won a premiership in his first season as a first-grade coach. The achievement immediately established him as one of the game’s outstanding emerging coaches.
His departure from Canterbury at the end of 1989 created an opportunity for Penrith.
The Panthers had already undergone a remarkable transformation. Tim Sheens had helped establish a new football culture and taken the club into its first finals series in 1985. Ron Willey had subsequently strengthened the team’s competitiveness and resilience, taking Penrith back to the finals in 1988.
A generation of talented young footballers had emerged through the club’s junior development system, while organisational and financial reforms had created a stronger foundation for the football operation.
Penrith was no longer a club struggling merely to compete. It was approaching the point where winning a premiership had become a realistic ambition.
Gould’s appointment was nevertheless far from inevitable. Roger Cowan and the Panthers Board considered other coaching possibilities, and Gould’s departure from Canterbury attracted considerable public attention.
The circumstances surrounding his recruitment, including the proposed arrangement involving Steve Mortimer and the discussions that eventually led to his appointment, are examined separately in Bringing Phil Gould Back to Penrith.
What made Gould’s appointment so significant was the convergence of two developments: a coach with an exceptional understanding of the game and a club whose long-term investment in junior development, organisational reform and football infrastructure had brought it within reach of a premiership. Gould possessed the skills to capitalise on that opportunity.
Gould introduced an uncompromising approach to preparation, fitness, discipline and selection. Players were expected to meet demanding standards, regardless of their experience or reputation.
His approach was not always comfortable. Some decisions, particularly those involving established senior players, caused considerable controversy.
But Gould was prepared to challenge existing practices if he believed doing so would improve the team’s prospects.
In 1990, Penrith reached its first Grand Final, losing to Canberra. Twelve months later, the Panthers returned to face the same opponents and won the club’s first premiership.
The achievement secured Gould an enduring place in Panthers history.
Unlike his predecessors, Gould arrived at a time when Penrith possessed many of the essential ingredients for success. His achievement was to convert their potential and take the football team to a level it had never previously reached.
Background
Gould played junior rugby league with Wentworthville before joining Penrith in 1976.
He came off-the-bench to make his first-grade debut on July 18, 1976 at Penrith Park against the Balmain Tigers before a crowd of 8,879 — Penrith lost 5-12, with Gould kicking a goal from two attempts.
On 7 May 1978, he became Penrith’s first-grade captain. At just 20 years of age he was the youngest player to captain the Club — and the second youngest in the history of the game in Australia.1 This was a considerable responsibility for a young player at a club still struggling to establish itself in the Sydney competition. The Panthers defeated Eastern Suburbs 15–13 in his first match as captain.
Phil Gould anointed as Panthers captain by Mike Stephenson and Don Parish Photo from Bound for Glory
His playing career was subsequently disrupted by injuries, including a serious eye problem (detached retina) that threatened his future in the game. Nevertheless, he developed a reputation as an intelligent, tactically aware forward whose understanding of rugby league extended beyond his own playing position.
After leaving Penrith, Gould played with Newtown, Canterbury and South Sydney. These experiences brought him into contact with coaches and football cultures that would profoundly influence his own approach to the game.
Particularly important was his association with Warren Ryan, first at Newtown and later at Canterbury. Ryan’s emphasis on defensive organisation, tactical preparation and disciplined team structures helped shape Gould’s understanding of what was required to win at the highest level.
By the time Gould’s playing career ended in 1986, he had already developed many of the qualities that would distinguish him as a coach.
Profession: Rugby League player, Coach, Administrator, Commentator
Panthers Involvement • First Grade Player (1976 – 1980) • Penrith First-Grade Captain — First Appointed 1978 • Head Coach (1990-1994) • General Manager (Rugby League) (2011-2019)
Representative Honours • NSW State of Origin — Coach (24 games)
Major Honours • 1988 — Dally M Coach of the Year • 1988, 1991 — NSWRL Premiership (Coach) • 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 2003, 2004 State of Origin Series Winning Coach • 2014 Member of the Order of Australia (AM) • 2015 Life Member Panthers
He brought a highly structured approach to coaching, emphasising preparation, physical conditioning, defensive organisation and the education of players in their individual and collective responsibilities.
Royce Simmons, reflecting on the changes introduced in 1990 in Hooked on League, described the arrival of specialist weight coaches, increased opportunities for players to train, and a more structured approach to how the team played.
These developments coincided with rugby league’s gradual transition towards greater professionalism.
Gould also demonstrated a willingness to make difficult selection decisions. His handling of Simmons during the 1990 season became one of the most prominent examples.
Such decisions were controversial, but they reflected Gould’s determination to establish standards that applied throughout the playing group. As Simmons reflected,
I can see now that it must have been very hard for ‘Gus’ —a guy who was not that much older than me, to tell a player in his testimonial year at Penrith, the club’s first Australian rep and club captain for nine seasons, that he had been dropped.2
The result was a team capable not only of competing with the strongest clubs but of defeating them when the stakes were highest.
The first premiership
The 1991 premiership was the defining achievement of Gould’s first period at Penrith.
It was also the culmination of a much longer organisational journey.
The football team included players whose development stretched back through the reforms of the early and mid-1980s, among them Greg Alexander, John Cartwright, Brad Fittler, Mark Geyer and Royce Simmons.
Gould built a disciplined and increasingly sophisticated football system, giving the talented group of players the greatest chance to shine.
His contribution was decisive, but it was not made in isolation.
The premiership belonged to the players, coaches, administrators, directors, staff and supporters whose combined efforts had helped bring Penrith to that point.
After the Premiership
The triumph of 1991 was followed by a far more difficult period for Penrith and its premiership-winning coach.
The death of Ben Alexander in June 1992 had a profound effect on the club, particularly on his brother Greg and other members of the playing group. The tragedy occurred at a time when Panthers were already experiencing difficulties involving injuries, player relationships, morale and performance.
Internal reports prepared by Panthers Chief Executive Don Feltis during 1992 and 1993 reveal the extent of those concerns. They describe a football operation struggling to maintain the cohesion and confidence that had contributed to its premiership success.
The circumstances confronting Gould were very different from those he had encountered during the premiership campaigns of 1990 and 1991. Relationships within the playing group had become increasingly complicated, while injuries and the loss of experienced players placed additional pressure on the team.
Yet the contemporary documents also demonstrate that the club’s difficulties could not reasonably be attributed to its coach alone.
In a detailed report to Feltis and the Board in August 1993, Gould acknowledged the team’s disappointing performances and accepted responsibility for aspects of the season. He also identified the impact of injuries, the emotional consequences of Ben Alexander’s death, problems involving individual players and the challenges of developing sufficient depth within the playing squad.
Gould’s assessment of Greg Alexander was particularly revealing. While describing him as the greatest player to have represented Panthers, Gould acknowledged the profound effect of Ben’s death and expressed concern about the difficulties Alexander was experiencing. His observations illustrated both the personal complexities confronting the playing group and the challenge of restoring the confidence and cohesion that had characterised the premiership-winning team.
His report reflected both frustration with the team’s performances and confidence in the younger players emerging through the club’s development system.
At the same time, Panthers were confronting broader organisational challenges. The increasing financial demands of professional rugby league, particularly player recruitment and retention, were placing pressure on the club’s resources and administrative arrangements.
Correspondence between Feltis and Roger Cowan during 1993 and 1994 reveals differences in their approaches to management, responsibility and the relationship between rugby league operations and the wider Panthers organisation. Those disagreements formed part of the environment in which Gould worked, although it is unknown how much impact it had on Gould.
Despite the difficulties, Gould remained one of the game’s most highly regarded coaches. He had also taken charge of New South Wales in State of Origin football, further enhancing his standing beyond Penrith.
In July 1994, Gould announced his departure from Panthers to take up the coaching position at Eastern Suburbs.
Contemporary newspaper reports indicate that Eastern Suburbs had pursued Gould as part of an ambitious effort to strengthen its football operation. However, his departure followed a period of increasingly strained relationships and uncertainty about his future at Penrith. Gould publicly stated that he would have left the club even without the Eastern Suburbs opportunity, suggesting that his decision involved more than simply accepting another coaching appointment.3
His departure brought to an end a remarkable five-year coaching association with Panthers — one that had delivered the club’s first Grand Final appearance and its first premiership, but had also encompassed some of the most difficult circumstances faced by the football operation in its history.
Whatever the complexities surrounding his departure, Gould’s contribution to Penrith’s breakthrough success remained undiminished.
A wider influence on rugby league
Gould’s influence on the game continued long after his departure from Penrith.
He continued with coaching New South Wales in the State of Origin series adding victories in 1996, 2003 and 2004. At the Sydney Roosters, his years as both coach and coaching director were significant in their development as a leadin rugby league organisation.
He also became one of the game’s most prominent commentators, developing a reputation for strong opinions about coaching, administration and the direction of rugby league.
In 2014, Gould was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to rugby league as an administrator, commentator, coach and player, and to the community.
In 2011, Gould returned to Penrith in a senior football management role, beginning a third significant period of involvement with the club.
Panthers were confronting substantial financial and football challenges. Gould became a central figure in efforts to restructure football operations, strengthen junior development and recruitment pathways, and establish a more sustainable approach to building competitive teams.
His work formed part of a broader period of organisational and financial restructuring, during which the club sought to address longstanding problems and create the foundations for renewed success.
The results were not immediate. However, the changes introduced during this period contributed to the development of the football operation that would subsequently achieve unprecedented success.
Gould departed Panthers in 2019, before the club’s remarkable run of premiership victories began. Nevertheless, his contribution to the rebuilding process remains an important part of his legacy.
He subsequently held football administration roles with other NRL clubs, including Canterbury-Bankstown.
Significance to Panthers
Phil Gould occupies a distinctive place in Penrith’s history.
His involvement in the club covering such different stages of its development is unique — as a young player during its early struggles, as the coach who delivered its first premiership, and later as an administrator during another major period of rebuilding.
His contribution to the 1991 premiership was immense.
But understanding that achievement requires recognising the work that preceded it.
Tim Sheens helped transform the football culture. Ron Willey consolidated the team’s competitiveness. The club’s junior development system produced an exceptional generation of players. Roger Cowan, successive Boards and many others built the organisational capacity needed to sustain a successful football operation.
Gould arrived when those developments had begun to converge.
His subsequent departure in 1994, following a difficult period for the club, demonstrated that even the most successful sporting relationships can be affected by changing circumstances.
Yet Gould’s connection with Panthers did not end there. His return in 2011 placed him at the centre of another significant period of football development and rebuilding.
Across three distinct periods, Gould contributed to Penrith’s evolution from a struggling club into one of rugby league’s most successful organisations.
His achievements, particularly the breakthrough premiership of 1991, secure his place among the most significant figures in Panthers history.
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Editorial Note
This profile is presented as contextual background. Additional material may be introduced as the narrative progresses.
The youngest captain in history is Dave Brown who was appointed captain of the Eastern Suburbs Roosters for the start of the 1932 Season. His first game as capatin was against the North Sydney Bears on Saturday 16th April 1932 — it was just 12 days after his 19th birthday (4 April). Easts won 15-7. The third youngest captain was Bob Fulton for Manly-Warringah. ↩︎
Hooked on League: Royce Simmons with Alan Whiticker published 2001. p. 42. ↩︎
See Steve Mascord, “I Would Have Left Panthers Anyway — Gus”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 1994, and Daniel Williams, “Panthers Under Siege”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 July 1994. The reports describe tensions within the football operation and uncertainty surrounding Gould’s future. Gould maintained that his decision to leave was not dependent on receiving an offer from Eastern Suburbs. ↩︎
This period is outside the era covered by Panthers, Passion & Politics. The impact of Gould during this period will undoubtedly be covered in detail by a future Panther historian ↩︎
Among the most complicated allegations examined by the Temby Inquiry were those concerning Phyro Holdings. The arrangements between Phyro and Panthers dated back to the early 1970s, making their reconstruction particularly demanding. Cowan says,
One of the criticisms that Temby made was that the Club didn’t really know what it owed me, and in 2002, I probably wasn’t sure either
From the time that the arrangement with Phyro began, I had always kept meticulous records of the work it did for the club. The trouble was, from about 1998, I had allowed myself to be drawn into conflict with some directors. By mid-2001 things were really starting to go downhill between Board and management. Then I had a heart attack and a bypass operation in January 2002. Six weeks later we were in the middle of a major conflict and I was back at work, full bang into the fight. They called Boon in, we had the aborted election and it was almost an all-in brawl a lot of the time.
Conflict in the boardroom was taking a lot of my time and energy. It started to dominate my thoughts and I began to take short cuts. I always made sure I was taking less than the contracts stipulated but sometimes I would put off doing an exact invoice because of more pressing issues. There was a time when the board executive used to come in every month and tick everything off, and the auditors used to check it regularly. My biggest regret during the inquiry was that I had not continued to maintain that quality of accounting.
The difficulty, as Cowan described it, was not the absence of records but the need to reconcile historical transactions with the contractual entitlements they represented.
Terrence Lynch says it was obvious from the outset that Phyro would be a contentious issue. In the months leading up to the announcement of the Inquiry the media had focused on its arrangements with Panthers. Michael Egan had made a number of comments on it, both in parliament and to the media. Phyro had been the subject of a front-page story and a feature article in the weekend Herald in September 2003, mentioning $2.9 million which had been paid by the Club to Phyro. This sum would be trotted out again and again by Herald journalist Paola Totaro in her stories covering the Inquiry, even after the facts surrounding it were brought out in evidence.
Most of the $2.9 million had been paid to third parties. More than $1 million went towards publishing and distributing 140,000 copies of Panthers Magazine each month, while another $1 million or more was spent on advertising. These were two examples of where the money went.
The contracts, in fact, spelled out very clearly that Cowan could not use his position to push more business to Phyro. How did this work? It was actually a quite simple arrangement. The contracts placed limits on the remuneration Phyro could receive from specified advertising and sponsorship activities. Those limits were intended to prevent Phyro’s financial benefit from increasing indefinitely as Panthers’ business expanded. However, the adequacy of the auditing and accounting arrangements would itself become an issue during the Inquiry.
Cowan agrees that it would have been inappropriate for his private company to hold open-ended contracts that could have been fattened by his decisions. That was never the case. He adds that if that had happened, it would certainly have come out in the extensive questioning and in the tens of thousands of pages of documents in the Temby Inquiry.
But from the day that Phyro started doing work for the Club, there was a limit on profit, and that was set in concrete by agreement with the Board executive. The Herald made continuous reference to a payment of $2.9 million to Phyro. It would have made no difference whether the sum was $2.9 million, or $29 million. The Phyro benefit would have been the same.
By the time the book was published in 2007, Phyro was no longer providing those services, and Panthers was paying other suppliers directly.
Allegations about Phyro in recent events could be countered readily enough. But Phyro’s longevity and Cowan’s insistence on confidentiality in his contracts obliged the Club’s counsel to rely on Cowan’s records for earlier years. Lynch describes how it was done:
Roger had told us that he had kept all these records, so very early in the piece, we actually forced him to go back over the previous ten years. We asked him to work out month by month what he was charging the club, and what he was getting over that entire period. It took some to-ing and fro-ing for Roger to get the idea of what we wanted, and the process was happening through the first part of the inquiry.
Something becomes obvious in Roger’s testimony if you read it – maybe if you didn’t see it happening, you wouldn’t know – but I could see it. As the reconstruction exercise progressed and clarified, Roger’s self-confidence in the witness box grew. At times in those first days, he sounded hesitant and fumbled over answers. One of the great fears you have when you face something like this is that you’re going to get a question about things eight years ago without notice. In that instant, how do you know whether you did something that long ago?
Reconstructing what he had done month by month was reassurance for himself, to let him know what he had done. So by the time they tried to drop a bundle on him, he had a very strong sense of how he had conducted himself.
And I believe that Temby responded to that. I think at some stage it started to dawn on him. I’m sure that at first, he probably did think there was corruption, but it dawned on him that there were deals, and some hanky panky accounting, but not corruption. No taking of money. For instance, when Roger said the figures were arbitrary in those first days, it sounded really bad, and everyone made a big issue of it, including the media. But through the process it came out, and Temby eventually got this, that the arbitrariness was about how you describe it, not about the actual figures. It was an arbitrary description that had nothing to do with dishonesty or corruption.
Cowan says there was one lucky break for him amongst all the blackness of the time.
I was becoming frustrated by questions that seemed to go around and around in circles, go nowhere, but leave the impression that I had taken more than my entitlements under the contracts. It was maximising the value of the inquiry for the media and making me look dishonest. Several times I gave evidence that I had taken less than my entitlements, and that the club owed me money. But of course there was no news value in that.
I asked John de Mestre, my legal counsel, to write a letter to the inquiry and offer a way to bring it to a head. The letter told them that they could select any forensic accountant of their choice to carry out a thorough audit of Phyro. I said I would pay for it, and I would make everything available to assist in such an audit. They refused my offer.
I thought it weird at the time, but now I wonder whether my goal – of killing off media speculation – was one they preferred not to pursue.
Later, I discovered that the exercise would have cost me around $200,000, so they did me a big favour.
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Barry Walsh recalled that Panthers had 20 people working night and day for months, assembling material for the Inquiry.
They were digging through files and going through archives, trying to put everything together, and the photocopier ran non-stop. We’d think we’d finished, there’d be another day of sittings and they’d want more.
The Inquiry eventually generated approximately 50,000 pages of documentation, filling some 200 lever-arch files. Most of the material was provided by Panthers.
The first sitting day was 8 June. The first witnesses, called for 15 June, were Barry Walsh and Roger Cowan. Walsh recalled being subjected to particularly rigorous questioning, which he considered at times amounted to badgering.
He says that every time he walked into the inquiry, he never knew what was coming.
I had no idea what I would be asked, and it was an extremely stressful time for everyone who was on the list to appear. They were asking you about things that happened sometimes twenty or more years ago, and to be perfectly honest, sometimes when you get older, you can forget some things. But they made it sound bad that you didn’t remember. Once you’d been there, you would worry night and day, waiting for the call to say that you had to appear again.
Walsh believed that the government was treating the five former directors who had made complaints as ‘Crown witnesses’. There were also rumours that members of the Footy Five met with DGR lawyers before giving evidence. Whether those meetings occurred, and what their purpose might have been, was not established.
Witnesses appearing before the Inquiry were subject to investigative powers that differed significantly from the procedures and evidentiary protections applying in ordinary criminal proceedings.
There was a period of frenzied activity at Panthers.
In the preamble to his final report, Ian Temby spoke of the legal requirements covering his appointment. He said that the one essential outcome was the provision of a report to the director of Liquor and Gaming stating his findings. If the director believed there had been a breach of the law in any Australian jurisdiction, or of any relevant act, he could then refer the matter to a law enforcement agency or any other interested body. The director could also order the Club to provide details on findings to all members, and to hold an election of the Board.
Temby also noted that the Royal Commission Act empowered him not just to summon witnesses. The Act states that witnesses shall not be excused from answering questions or producing documents on the grounds that doing so may incriminate them. These rules do not apply in a normal court of law. He added that under the Act, a person presiding at an inquiry such as this ‘is not bound by the rules or practice of evidence’. Temby reported,
While most of the evidence received by the inquiry was of the sort that would be admissible in an ordinary court, there were exceptions.
The Inquiry had extensive powers to compel witnesses to answer questions and produce documents, subject to the applicable legislation. Where second-hand or overheard remarks are inadmissible in a normal court of law, they were acceptable by Ian Temby under the rules of this Inquiry.
Some witnesses recounted conversations in which unnamed Panthers employees had allegedly claimed they were intimidated before an election. Those employees did not appear before the Inquiry, but the accounts were admitted into evidence. Their admission did not, of itself, establish that intimidation had occurred.
Staff intimidation was among the more serious allegations dealt with by the Inquiry. The way it was handled raises questions. One witness did appear, saying she felt that she had been intimidated before the October 2002 election. Her name was on a list of around 40 staff members that Panthers had provided to the DGR, at the DGR’s request. The DGR was given their names, addresses and contact phone numbers. Glenn Matthews says:
The names primarily came from attendees at the SCOT meeting1[the team leaders’ meeting] and from some friends of the Footy Five who tried to insist that management were pressuring staff.
Two others from the list of 40 appeared as witnesses, both denied any intimidation.
Greg Evans claimed to have the names of employees who said they had been intimidated. However, the manuscript records no evidence that those names, or supporting statements from the employees concerned, were produced during the Inquiry.
We know that some of the Five signed letters to the DGR. Logically the Five would have been interviewed about such allegations. If they had names, or affidavits, to back up some of their claims, wouldn’t they have handed them over to the DGR? The evidence was never produced – but such allegations are on the record anyway.
Terrence Lynch asked DGR counsel in final submissions to the Inquiry – did any, or all of the remaining 39 employees2 on the list deny having been intimidated? Lynch argued that the absence of testimony from other employees raised serious questions about how the allegations had been investigated. If those employees could substantiate the claims, he questioned why they had not been called. If they could not, he believed their absence cast doubt on the objectivity of the investigation.3
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[1] SCOT Meetings included all the team leaders at Panthers (approx. 50) and the focus of these meetings was the Synergy and Cooperation Of Teams (SCOT). ↩︎
The original publication says “the remaining 379 employees”. That number makes no sense as Panthers had almost 1000 employees. This refers to the remaining employees who were on the list provided to the DGR. ↩︎
In his final report, Temby criticised Glenn Matthews’ conduct at the September 2002 staff meeting, concluding that he had encouraged support for the management ticket. The Report distinguished this conduct from the broader allegations of employee intimidation. ↩︎
On 16 May 2004, Sydney’s Sun-Herald newspaper ran a story with the headline ‘Mega-clubs face inquiry of ICAC proportions’. Alex Mitchell, the writer, revealed that Premier Bob Carr was about to announce that former ICAC chief Ian Temby QC would head up an investigation into the NSW clubs industry. According to the report, the proposed inquiry would have powers comparable to those of a Royal Commission. It would target mega-clubs such as Panthers, Bulldogs, Cronulla Sharks and Parramatta Leagues. The hearings would start on 1 June, said Mitchell.
ClubsNSW CEO David Costello questioned the fact that the new legislation would only target clubs. Hotels, casinos, online betting companies and a number of other industries also come under the department’s jurisdiction.
Of course, the Department of Gaming and Racing receives complaints. But only about one third of them pertain to clubs. And of that number – as in any system of complaints to government bodies – many are frivolous or vexatious.
In the last week of May 2004, a small, one-column ad was run in two Sydney newspapers and publications in Penrith, Newcastle and Port Macquarie. It was headed ‘Inquiry into Penrith Rugby League Club Limited’. This was the first and only notification to Panthers that they specifically would be the focus of the new legislation. Cowan and the club had less than three weeks to prepare.
The ad, under the NSW Coat of Arms, went on to say that the director of Gaming and Racing had appointed Ian Temby to preside over an inquiry into allegations in relation to the club, under the new section 41X of the Registered Clubs Act. Six allegations were listed, and readers were directed to the DGR website. It said that anyone could seek leave to appear at the inquiry.
The six allegations fell broadly into three areas. The first four concerned the aborted March 2002 Board election, subsequent constitutional changes affecting voting rights, and whether members of amalgamating clubs or the Panthers Board had been misled about those rights.
The fifth concerned the disclosure of information about Cowan’s remuneration and the financial dealings between Panthers and Phyro Holdings. The sixth, and most serious, alleged that the Club had been run for the benefit of Cowan, his family and close associates, rather than in the interests of its members.
The allegations were set out in the public notice announcing the Inquiry. The notice in appeared in various metropolitan and regional publications. It is reproduced here.
Click to enlarge.
There was a period of frenzied activity at Panthers.
The allegations gave some idea of what would be required, but the extent of the investigations was yet unknown. In retrospect, a more measured assessment of the allegations might have led Panthers to approach the Inquiry differently. At the time, however, management began assembling whatever documentation it believed might be required, even though no subpoenas had yet been issued. Chairman Barry Walsh said they were flying blind.
That week, a story appeared in the Penrith Press in which Roger Cowan said ‘Bring it on’. Neither he nor the club had anything to fear, he said. But it was obvious to everyone at Panthers in June 2004 that the government meant business.
Ron Mulock asserted that Cowan’s challenge to ‘bring it on’ was the catalyst for calling the Inquiry, even though it had already been announced. Cowan calls Mulock’s claim nonsense.
He repeated the comment at a Panthers annual meeting after I said I believed he had lobbied for the Inquiry.
As for the remark, when the reporter asked me for my reaction to the calling of the Inquiry, I was certainly not going to say, “Please don’t”. That would have looked like an admission of guilt. The only thing I could say was that we had nothing to hide, and basically – if there had to be an inquiry, so be it. There was nothing we could do about it, except cop it sweet.
One thing I learned very early in life. You don’t stop the bully by looking scared or asking for mercy.
Former ClubsNSW chairman Pat Rogan says the government was very confident going into the Inquiry.
They were sure they were going to get something. Egan was looking for a scalp with the new tax coming in. If they could get a big one, the clubs would fall into line.
Souris believed that the government needed to discredit the club movement to justify the new taxes, and that they deliberately targeted the highest profile club and its CEO.
What really struck me was the fact that they actually got to the point of creating new legislation. Then they decided. We choose Penrith Panthers, we choose Roger Cowan.
George Souris, the Shadow Minister for Gaming and Racing agrees,
They were getting a bit of needle, particularly from some of those members from strong western suburbs electorates. They were cock-a-hoop that if they could scandalise Panthers to a great extent, the public mood would turn against the clubs. And their back bench would calm down.
Souris says the opposition’s support of the clubs on this issue was much more than token opposition.
It was the vindictiveness of Egan and Carr. They were peddling this personal hatred stuff, trying to win the argument over the taxes by killing off one of the star players. It was a campaign of personal denigration, singling out one club and one man.
We had become greater friends with the club movement anyway. We’d marched in the street with them. But I was amazed at the level of fervour from a government that seemed intent on attacking its own heartland.
And suddenly you’ve got this brand new legislation with the powers of a Royal Commission. What was that all about? The DGR has always been able to conduct investigations under the act, and it does so – quite vigorously. There’s probably a couple of hundred investigations going on at any one time.
So here’s 41X and the first time they use it, they pick Ian Temby – sure to attract the maximum media coverage – to run it’, Souris said. ‘It was specifically designed to escalate into some kind of judicial, some kind of Royal Commission circus, and it did.
Terrence Lynch appeared for Panthers at the Inquiry. He says the government knew what it was doing when it appointed Temby.
They thought that he would suit them, because if they really believed there was corruption, he was someone who would be aggressive about it.
Temby’s a moralist. He was once quoted as saying “to lie is corruption”. He had run high-profile inquiries, prosecuting Neville Wran and Lionel Murphy. He also made the finding of corruption against Nick Greiner – which of course was later overturned.1This is the point with Temby. What he regarded as corruption might be so in a perfectly moral world, but we live in the real world, and we must be judged – and judge others – by its standards. Basically, you have to assess the quality of conduct within some objective standards.
But the DGR had to act. Even Roger Cowan agreed on that point.
The DGR had no choice. It was the government that betrayed our system of justice and democracy when it decided to investigate the complaints by establishing a specially designed fishing expedition with quite extraordinary powers.
It was virtually saying, “Our investigators haven’t come up with the results we want. Let’s throw a big net over everything under Royal Commission powers, and we’re sure to find something”.
Such a high level of confidence on the part of the DGR and the government might explain what Cowan perceived as frustration in Mr Staehli, who was one of the counsel assisting the Inquiry. Cowan believed that the government’s expectations influenced the conduct of the Inquiry. Looking back, he offers his interpretation of the approach taken by David Staehli:
In this case Staehli was acting as a prosecutor. There can be no doubt that his task was to find evidence that would justify the allegations that had been made. Before it all started I believed in fairies, I think. I really thought that the inquiry would be looking for all the facts in an objective and impartial manner. In my opinion it did not happen that way at all.
I don’t know how a prosecutor works, but I imagine he would have made a detailed plan before he started. He had obviously been given a lot of information by the DGR, he would have information provided by the Footy Five, and there was all the information that I had been asked to provide for the previous ten years for Phyro Holdings, my wife and myself.
The DGR had spent the past year or so investigating the Club and taken no action. If Egan and his people were not expecting Temby to dig out something the DGR couldn’t find, there is a second possibility that is too horrible to contemplate – that the government knew from the start there was nothing to find. What if they suspected or knew the complaints didn’t hold water and that the claims had been discredited very early in the investigation by a team of competent DGR officers? If this were the case, it would mean that the Inquiry had no intended outcome for the government other than to heap negative publicity on the club industry.
Still, if there was an air of confidence Staehli would have drawn up his battle plans. I imagine he would have listed all the crimes I might have committed. Then he would have taken each one and drawn up a plan to lead me through events leading up to it.
He would start with questions that seemed broad and innocuous, questions that would encourage me to think I could twist the truth. As I became more comfortable, the questions would become more focused and more specific. Variations or contradictions in my answers would be highlighted. Gradually I would be led into each of the traps and there would be no escape route.
One reason it did not work was that I had no reason to twist the truth at any time. In fact, I believed that getting at the truth was the only thing that could save me from the jaws of a very formidable predator – the NSW Government.
A second reason is that Staehli had probably based his list of possible crimes on information that had been supplied to him but was not true.
I was patiently led up the paths of questioning. But there were no contradictions, no lies and therefore no trap to spring when Staehli arrived at each of his destinations. Towards the end of the Inquiry, his frustrationbubbled over into anger.
Cowan later recalled being told an anecdote about Staehli’s frustration during the Inquiry. Although he had no firsthand knowledge of the conversation, he found the story consistent with his experience:
After the inquiry ended, I was told an interesting story. Staehli was speaking to some legal friends of his frustrations during the Inquiry. He likened the experience to playing the old thimble and pea trick, where there is one pea and three thimbles, and the trick is to pick which thimble the pea is under. On a number of occasions he said he was convinced that a certain line of questioning would find the corruption he was seeking, but every time he lifted the thimble, there was no pea.
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Ian Temby and the Greiner case: As NSW’s first ICAC Commissioner, Ian Temby presided over the investigation into Premier Nick Greiner’s appointment of former minister Terry Metherell to a public service position. ICAC found Greiner’s conduct to be technically corrupt under the legislation. The NSW Court of Appeal subsequently overturned the findings, although Greiner had already resigned as Premier in 1992. See ICAC Explained – a 2016 article from ABC News. ↩︎
Not many individuals connect the different eras of the Panthers story as completely as Greg Brandy Alexander.
He emerged from the Penrith district as one of the most gifted footballers the club had produced, became its first premiership-winning captain, represented New South Wales and Australia, and eventually returned to Panthers in another capacity — as a director.
His playing career coincided with the period in which Penrith finally moved from being an occasional contender to one of rugby league’s leading clubs. More than a decade later, his election to the Board placed him inside an entirely different Panthers story: the bitter struggle over governance and direction that forms an important part of Panthers, Passion & Politics.
Those two roles — player and director — make Alexander a significant figure in the narrative for quite different reasons.
Role in the Narrative
Greg Alexander represents perhaps the clearest footballing expression of the transformation Panthers had been attempting since the early 1980s.
The changes begun during that period were not simply about finding better first-grade players. They involved restructuring the relationship between the Football Club and the licensed club, improving coaching and development systems, and placing much greater emphasis on producing elite footballers from the enormous junior base available to Penrith.
Alexander became one of the clearest demonstrations of what that emerging system could produce.
By the time Penrith reached its first Grand Final in 1990 and won its first premiership the following year, he had become both captain and one of the most recognisable players in Australian rugby league.
His importance to Panthers, Passion & Politics, however, extends beyond the playing field.
Eleven years after lifting the premiership trophy, Alexander stood for election to the Panthers Board during the bitter 2002 election campaign. His election therefore provides an unusual bridge between the footballing rise of the 1980s and early 1990s and the governance conflicts that dominate the later chapters of the book.
Background
Gregory Peter Stephen Alexander was born in Penrith on 4 March 1965 and grew up in the district. He attended St Dominic’s College before completing his schooling at Patrician Brothers’ College, Fairfield, and represented the Australian Schoolboys in 1983.
His emergence was immediate.
Greg “Brandy” Alexander circa 1984. Image source: unknown
Alexander was both Penrith’s and the Dally M Rookie of the Year in 1984. A year later, still only in his second season of first grade, he won the Dally M Player of the Year, Dally M Halfback of the Year and Penrith’s Player of the Year award in 1990.
His emergence coincided almost exactly with a fundamental change in the way Panthers approached football.
The move to the Mulgoa Road complex and the adoption of a unified approach to the licensed club and football operations were accompanied by a deliberate effort to develop elite players from Penrith’s junior system. Alexander became compelling evidence that the district could produce players capable not merely of playing first grade, but of competing at the highest levels of the game.
In 1986 Alexander and Royce Simmons became the first Penrith players selected for a Kangaroo Tour. Alexander subsequently represented New South Wales and Australia and developed into one of the outstanding attacking players of his generation.
By the end of the decade, Penrith itself was changing around him.
Tim Sheens had helped rebuild the football operation and Ron Willey consolidated that progress, while players including Alexander, Simmons, John Cartwright, Mark Geyer, Brad Izzard and the emerging Brad Fittler gave the club a playing strength it had rarely possessed before.
When Phil Gould arrived as coach in 1990, he therefore inherited a very different football operation from the one Sheens had encountered earlier in the decade. The foundations were already there. Gould provided the standards, preparation and tactical discipline that helped take the team the final step.
Profession: Rugby League player, Media Commentator; Director
Panthers Involvement • First Grade Player (1984-94; 1997-99) • Premiership-winning Captain (1991) • Director (2002-current)
Representative Honours • Australian Schoolboys (1983) • NSW State of Origin (6 games) • NSW Super League Tri-Series (1997) • Australia (6 Test matches)
Major Honours • 1984 — Dally M Rookie of the Year • 1984 — Panthers Rookie of the Year • 1985 — Dally M Player of the Year • 1985, 1989, 1991 — Dally M Halfback of the Year • 1985, 1990 — Panthers Player of the Year (renamed Merv Cartwright Medal) • 1991 — NSWRL Premiership winning Captain • 2000 — Australian Sports Medal • 2001 — Panthers Life Membership • 2006 — Panthers Team of Legends • 2016 — Inaugural Inductee, Panthers Hall of Fame
Relevance to Events Described
Alexander captained Penrith into previously unexplored territory.
In 1990 the Panthers reached their first Grand Final, losing 18–14 to Canberra. Twelve months later the same clubs met again.
This time Penrith won.
Alexander’s contribution to the 1991 Grand Final was characteristic of the player he had become. His second-half kicking game helped turn the match, including a long-range field goal that put Penrith ahead, before his sideline conversion of Royce Simmons’ late try helped seal the club’s first premiership.
Yet Alexander’s significance was greater than his performance in one match.
The premiership represented the culmination of changes that had taken place over many years. Penrith had developed from a club hoping to compete into one capable of producing its own international players and ultimately its own premiership-winning captain.
Alexander stood at the centre of that transformation.
What followed gave the story a profoundly different dimension.
In June 1992, Greg’s younger brother and Panthers teammate Ben Alexander was killed in a motor vehicle accident. Greg had already been sidelined by a knee injury and returned only later in the season. The loss had a deep impact on Greg personally, the Panthers playing group, the entire Panthers staff, and the wider community.
The full story of Ben Alexander belongs elsewhere in Beyond the Book. Within Greg’s profile it is enough to recognise that the tragedy became inseparable from the years that followed.
Alexander eventually left Penrith for the newly established Auckland Warriors, spending two seasons there before returning to the Panthers in 1997. He remained until his retirement in 1999. Across his two periods with Penrith he played 228 first-grade matches and scored 1,100 points.
Retirement did not end his association with Panthers.
In 2002 Alexander nominated for the Football Club Board at a time when the organisation was deeply divided. His candidacy would subsequently become associated with the group of candidates commonly described as the “management ticket”, but Alexander himself presented his nomination rather differently.
Alexander had told the Penrith Press that he had been considering standing for the Board for three years, since retiring from football, and wanted to give something back to the club. He also spoke positively of Roger Cowan’s contribution to Panthers. In a subsequent interview with the Western Weekender, Alexander acknowledged speculation about whose election “ticket” he might be running on, but said he had given it little thought. He wanted to be regarded as his “own man”, elected on merit, and said that decisions coming before the Board should be assessed individually.
Greg Alexander nominates for the Panthers Board. Western Weekender 27th Sep 2002. Click image to enlarge. Clipping from the Weaver Collection
Alexander also circulated his own recommended group of candidates. Significantly, it did not simply reproduce either of the principal groupings contesting the election. Among those he recommended was John Bateman, one of the five sitting directors whose conflict with senior management lay at the centre of the Board dispute. The issue later arose during the Temby Inquiry, when Alexander said that Rob Weaver had assisted him with the wording accompanying that recommendation.
Alexander topped the poll.
The election was subsequently examined closely by Ian Temby QC, particularly the extent to which senior management had become involved in determining the composition of the Board to which management itself was accountable. When Temby put that governance problem directly to Alexander, Alexander accepted the difficulty.
The episode placed Alexander in a very different Panthers environment from the one in which he had first become prominent.
The premiership captain had become a director.
The questions were no longer about football tactics, leadership on the field or winning Grand Finals. They were about accountability, organisational authority and the relationship between management and the Board.
Alexander’s relationships within Panthers also extended well beyond the Boardroom. Glenn Matthews later recalled that, when he decided to resign as Panthers CEO, Alexander was the only person outside his immediate family whom he told before announcing the decision to the Board. Matthews described a friendship stretching across virtually their entire adult lives.
Beyond Panthers, Alexander also established a substantial post-playing career in rugby league media, becoming a prominent television and radio commentator and analyst.
Legacy
Greg Alexander occupies a distinctive place in Panthers history.
There have been more premierships since 1991, more representative players and new generations of local juniors who have achieved things that once seemed almost unimaginable.
But somebody had to be first.
Alexander belonged to the generation that demonstrated what Penrith’s enormous junior base and increasingly sophisticated football system could produce. He became an Australian representative, an elite player and, ultimately, the captain who lifted the premiership trophy when Panthers won the competition for the first time.
That alone would secure his place in the club’s history.
Panthers subsequently recognised that contribution formally. Alexander was made a Life Member in 2001, selected at halfback in the club’s Team of Legends and, in 2016, became one of the four inaugural inductees into the Panthers Hall of Fame. He had also received the Australian Sports Medal in 2000.
His later service as a director adds another dimension. It connected one of the defining figures of Panthers’ first great football era with the difficult organisational period described in the later chapters of Panthers, Passion & Politics.
In that sense Alexander’s Panthers story spans an unusually wide arc.
He became the captain who helped vindicate it.
And years later, he became — and remains — one of those entrusted with helping govern the organisation it had helped create.
In September 2003, while the Treasurer was fighting off the flak generated by the new taxes, Panthers suddenly began to receive adverse media coverage.
When the allegations against Roger Cowan came to light in The Sydney Morning Herald, their timing was politically advantageous for Michael Egan. But was it just coincidence? We know that the government and the Herald were sent the same allegations in 2002. The newspaper had the information for around a year.
Was it just coincidental that the Herald timed its coverage perfectly for the government?1
The two Herald journalists – Anne Davies and Paola Totaro – were to play a big part in the story. In many articles through 2003, Totaro’s by-line carried the title ‘State Political Editor’. In her later stories covering the inquiry, this by-line was not used.
The first major hit on Panthers came in the weekend edition of the Herald, 27-28 September 2003, with the lead story by the two journalists in the paper’s News Review section. The story made allegations about Roger Cowan’s family company and its dealings with Panthers. The Herald ran stories about Cowan and the Club over four consecutive days. In another apparent coincidence, 28 September was the day that former directors Geoff James and John Bateman spoke to Ray Hadley on the radio. James boasted that he and his colleagues had initiated complaints to the DGR.
According to a number of sources from the press gallery and Macquarie Street that Ron Mulock was walking the halls of Parliament around this time, lobbying on the subject of Roger Cowan and Panthers.
Though he did not admit to that accusation when Cowan put it to him at a Panthers 2005 AGM, Mulock said that “questions needed to be asked and answers needed to be given and they haven’t been given over the past 27 years”.
The club industry’s protest rally was scheduled for 1st October, three days after the article appeared. The rally would see 15,000 people march on Parliament House in Sydney. The crowd included club patrons, management and staff, representatives of religious and community groups, entertainers, suppliers, sporting people and federal and state politicians.
George Souris, Shadow Minister for Gaming and Racing, was one of the leaders of the march, as was Pat Rogan. Speaking late in 2005, Souris said,
In attacking the clubs, Labor is attacking its own heartland, I can’t understand this. People that go to clubs are the everyday people out there in the suburbs. The bowling clubs, the soccer clubs, they often provide the only sports facilities for the community in their areas. If the tax forces them to close, those facilities are lost forever.
At the time of the Allen report2, sporting venues maintained by clubs included 1,621 bowling greens, 102 gyms, 325 sporting fields and 338 golf courses. While some clubs own their facilities, others are council owned, and the clubs take responsibility for maintaining them. Panthers’ rugby league ground — Penrith Stadium — is an example. It is held in trust by Penrith City Council, but it has been maintained by the club since Penrith joined the rugby league first division in 1967.
The ten electorates to be hardest hit by the tax were held by Labor.3 Egan was facing a backbench revolt. The day after the rally, a vote was taken in the ALP caucus on a motion to review the tax. The count was 34 all.4
Against that background, the publication of serious allegations against the CEO of the country’s biggest licensed club came at a politically convenient time for the government.
Cowan recalls a further burst of activity by the DGR at Panthers soon after the revelations in the Sydney Morning Herald and wonders whether the government was putting extra pressure on DGR officers.
A few weeks after the October rally, planned changes to the Registered Clubs Act 1976 were announced that would provide broad new powers of inquiry. The new provision became Section 41X.5
George Souris had entered the fight against the new legislation quite early in the picture. In 2005 he said,
41X came in during the campaign against the clubs. It was never part of the Act before 2003. This whole thing with Royal Commission/inquisition inquiry powers [is new]. It’s always been possible to have investigations under the Act. There are investigations going on all the time – about 200 going on now, as we speak. And in appointing Ian Temby, they knew they’d get maximum mileage.
Souris believed that the government needed to discredit the club movement to justify the new taxes, and that they deliberately targeted the highest profile club and its CEO.
What really struck me was the fact that they actually got to the point of creating new legislation. Then they decided. We choose Penrith Panthers, we choose Roger Cowan.
He added,
And then there’s the sub-plot; they were being fed all this crap which gave them the ammunition they needed.
Panthers was going to be one of the worst affected by this tax regime. It would be expected to pay a minimum of $17 million additional tax each year. By the time the tax was fully implemented, the club’s tax would increase from $26 million to $43 million, provided that its revenue remained at the same level.
Apart from being an outspoken critic of the NSW government’s moves against the clubs, Roger Cowan was seen by some in the government as the prime mover behind the Registered Clubs Party6, which formed in the late 90s and ran candidates for the Upper House.
Second on the party’s ticket was Cowan’s son, Stephen.
But Cowan always questioned the wisdom of running candidates representing the club industry.
I was particularly averse to the use of the name Registered Club Party. In my mind, we were on a hiding to nothing. I thought any gains from a win would be marginal, and a loss would demonstrate that the industry was politically weak.
Till recently, I never really held to the common belief that the two million plus club members in NSW could be mobilised to a strong electoral advantage. The government has made such an enormous attack on the industry that circumstances might have changed … they haven’t moved the goalposts, they’ve chopped them down.
In the late 90s, despite his reservations, some people identified Cowan with the new party.
It later became clear that some people within the Labor party were hostile about the entire episode, and to a large extent, they held me responsible. The fact is, I had nothing to do with the decision to form a party. Once it was decided, I felt I had to recommend that Panthers support it. If it had been my choice, there would never have been a Registered Clubs Party.
Looking back, it was probably a tactical error, but the government reaction is still difficult to understand. It is just one example of some of the spitefulness that existed within the Carr government. To me, none of this seemed to fit the image of the traditional ‘light-on the-hill’ party built by, and for the working man.
But I was once warned in no uncertain terms, over a completely different issue, that this party does not forgive, or forget those who oppose it. The warning came from someone who should know – a former deputy premier of NSW, Ron Mulock.
Cowan says he always tried to ensure that club management worked with the industry regulatory bodies in a spirit of open and honest co-operation. Phil Bennett, who was an inspector for the Liquor Administration Board – the forerunner of the DGR – in the seventies, bears this out.
‘Roger was usually very co-operative in his dealings with the LAB’, said Bennett.
He always used to put his hand up. He was a man of conviction, and if he believed something was wrong, he would always stick his hand up and say so. He didn’t always go with the flow, but he always tried to work with the department to educate officers about new trends and innovations, which most LAB people saw as positive.
Glenn Matthews confirmed this:
We were always totally open with the DGR – still are. Roger always maintained that it was best to work with them and co-operate fully. We had such good systems in place that everything was easy to track anyway.
The result was what Cowan describes as ‘a very good working relationship with the department and its principal officers’. Cowan says they worked out quite quickly that the investigations in October 2003 related to elections and amalgamations. Geoff James’ call to Ray Hadley had confirmed the origin – and the timing – of the complaints, and also that a second letter had been sent in June of 2003.
An unnamed source gave Cowan details of the June letter. It was worded much more strongly and threatened that the matters would be taken to ICAC (NSW’s Independent Commission Against Corruption) unless urgent attention was given by the DGR to the original allegations. It seemed that the Footy Five were not about to let the matter die.
But most of the complaints had already been investigated, and the DGR had taken no action. We knew that there were allegations related to Phyro, and several questions about that subject had been answered. The new legislation relating to salary disclosures was in the pipeline, so I assumed the DGR would want more when that came through. I was still not really concerned. I could see no areas where we would have anything to answer.
During the investigations into my own situation, the inspector made one appointment [to see me] on the pretext of verifying the accuracy of salary disclosures given by the club. He made it sound routine, and said they were carrying out the same exercise with the top 50 clubs. This appeared quite logical, given the new legislation.
Very soon into the interview, his questions made it quite obvious there were broader objectives in play.
One of the criticisms levelled at Roger Cowan is that for a man of his talents and business acumen, he has, at times in his life, been incredibly trusting, even naïve. This time things suddenly began to fall into place in his head, and he started to become concerned.
It became obvious in the mad flurry of publicity and investigations that I needed to take some good legal advice. The gist of it [the advice] was that the combination of recent events made it very foolish to continue our policy of openness and co-operation with the DGR.
This caused some conflict for me. I asked for a meeting with Darryl Freeman from the DGR and reiterated my preference to maintain our policy of openness. But I also needed to protect my own interests. Yes, they had a right to expect my co-operation, but I questioned their right to go on a wild fishing trip into my affairs.
I explained my suspicions that the DGR was under pressure to find anything, no matter how minor, to discredit me and thus to discredit Panthers.
Memories of the police investigation some 15 years earlier7 had made Cowan a little shy of co-operating with people who may be on a witch hunt. Despite his experience, when the inquiry began Cowan still did not have personal legal representation. The Club was represented by Terrence Lynch.
I appointed my own legal representative a few weeks after the Inquiry commenced, when I belated came to understand that my interests and the interest of the Club were quite separate.
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In Part 67 we noted that the very well respected journalist, Paola Totaro, worked in Bob Carr’s team for period between 1988 and 1995. ↩︎
The Allen Consulting Group’s 2004 report, commissioned by ClubsNSW, examined the economic and community contribution of registered clubs in NSW and the potential consequences of the proposed gaming tax increases. The report was also discussed in Part 67. ↩︎
Speaking in the NSW Legislative Assembly on 15 October 2003, Liberal MP Anthony Roberts (Member for Lane Cove) claimed that the electorates most heavily affected by the proposed gaming tax increases were held by Labor. He identified Cabramatta, Penrith, Bankstown, Lakemba, Smithfield, Mount Druitt, Tweed, Parramatta and Strathfield, stating that the affected electorates contributed approximately $807 or more per voter. (NSW Parliamentary Hansard, Legislative Assembly, 15 October 2003.) ↩︎
Under NSW Labor’s caucus rules, a caucus majority could require the government to reconsider a Cabinet decision. A motion was put seeking to reopen negotiations over the proposed gaming tax thresholds. The vote was tied at 34–34. As the motion failed to secure a majority, it was defeated, leaving the government’s position unchanged. ↩︎
Section 41X of the Registered Clubs Act 1976 provided for formal inquiries into registered clubs. The provision was introduced in 2003 and later repealed in 2011. Its significance is discussed in Part 66. ↩︎
The Registered Clubs Party was established in the late 1990s to represent the interests of the registered-club industry in NSW politics. It contested seats in the NSW Legislative Council but did not achieve electoral success. Its involvement in state politics became another source of tension between the industry and the Labor Government. ↩︎
This investigation is covered in Chaprter 8 — A Taste of Injustice (Parts 22-25). ↩︎
