Donald (Don) Ellks was one of the most significant operational managers in Panthers’ history.Beginning as a casual barman carrying a drinks tray, he progressed through the ranks over more than twenty-five years to become General Manager, helping guide the club through its relocation to Mulgoa Road and the rapid growth that followed.
His association with Penrith Rugby League Club began through rugby league, including playing for St Marys and Penrith A Grade and serving as a committeeman.
Role in the Narrative
Don was an Assistant Manager then General Manager for the planning, establishment and ongoing operation of the club’s relocation to Mulgoa Rd and the addition of the hotel and Cables Ski Park.
He was also instrumental in supporting the unified governance model that ultimately transformed the management of Panthers.
Background
Born: 1940 Died: 2025
Recognition by Panthers • Life Membership, Penrith Panthers (1994)
Relevance to Events Described
Panthers was early to recognise the importance of providing pathways for talent, effort and results to progress through the ranks instead of seniority. Don was a case in point, starting as a bar attendant and progressing to General Manager.
Don’s operational management skills and experience complemented Roger’s leadership. In the first few years after the relocation to Mulgoa Road, the club achieved strong double-digit year-on-year sales growth but remained under significant financial pressure. High interest rates, construction cost overruns and the operational demands of rapid expansion meant that increased turnover did not immediately translate into financial security. Don’s experience working in departments, managing departments and managing managers led to the development of the systems and procedures needed for the effective and efficient operation of all departments and the ultimate success of the relocation.
Don’s long history with rugby league and operations also provided Roger with valuable support in the boardroom and dealing with politics.
Don Ellks’ career reflected many of the qualities that underpinned Panthers’ growth during the Cowan era: loyalty, practical experience, operational discipline and a willingness to take responsibility.
While others often occupied the public spotlight, Don was a key figure responsible for turning vision into day-to-day reality.
A removed section from the original Chapter 5: Building the Basics — Business Principles and Property. This examines the challenges faced in negotiating with Council over the Station Street site.
Roger reflected that certain individuals within Council held the view — and perhaps the expectation — that he would eventually be taken down a notch or two. To this day one aspect of this attitude irks Cowan, describing it as one of his worst memories.
While others involved in the negotiations may have viewed the issues differently, Roger believed the Club received little recognition for its contribution to the community. In his view, the charges and conditions imposed during the sale and development process reflected a lack of support for what Panthers was attempting to achieve.
I think the Club was treated very unfairly by Council. Before we could start building on Mulgoa Road, we had to sell the Station Street site. Council made it extraordinarily difficult. One of the conflicts related to two roads on the Station Street property. One of them was no more than a line on a map. It had never been a road. But the only way we were going to be able to sell that property was to negotiate with Council. The price Council sought was $850,000 — around a quarter of the total amount the Club expected to receive for the entire property.
I tried everything to get a better deal. I told them of a similar case where a club had been able to negotiate an agreement with its local council to close a road for the nominal sum of $1, as a sign of support for the club.
Our involvement in our community was far greater than that of the other club. For instance, we had previously agreed to a joint venture with Council to build a Police Citizen’s Boys Club in Penrith. It was the first boys club ever built without the need to raise funds from the public. We were sponsoring most sports in the area. On top of this the Club’s work to get Penrith to the elite level of rugby League had dramatically increased the city’s profile. I thought we had earned the right to support from Council, rather than obstruction. The city was benefiting on a number of levels from the work we had done, and it was giving nothing back. In fact it was profiteering from our planning.
I told them what we were planning to do would be a tremendous boost for Penrith. But all they saw were the problems, rather than the advantages.
The roads incident was not the only problem imposed on us by Council over that property sale. Another episode contributed to a very nasty police investigation a few years later.
One of the key issues underlying these negotiations related to what are known as paper roads. Paper roads are sections of land set aside by councils for roads in the future. According to Pat Sheehy:
Council planners had discovered the paper road in earlier negotiations for the property. It meant that Panthers did not own the whole site, with the result that Council said “OK, if you want to buy that land back from us, this is what we’re going to charge. All this happened before I was on council, but as far as Panthers was concerned it was absolutely exorbitant.
Robinsons 1957 Street Directory showing Frederick St ( a “paper road”) between Station & Wooddriff Sts. The other street in the negotiation was Park St.
Cowan said the problems extended beyond the property sale and continued into the approval process for the new site:
Council imposed a per hectare sewerage fee on the property based on the total area of land we owned. We were planning to build the club on an area of about 8 hectares. Most of the land was flood-prone, so you couldn’t build on it anyway. But we were hit with this huge bill, based on 86 hectares.
We had to negotiate to defer the payment, but this also became an issue. Even though we eventually came to an agreement, there are still people on Council who believe that Panthers ripped off the Council over that sewerage fee. Under the circumstances, that’s quite laughable
These issues illustrate the complexity of the negotiations and the differing perspectives that would continue to shape relations between the Club and Council.
There was one more monumental event for the Penrith Leagues Club in the seventies.
In 1971, the club became aware of a property on Mulgoa Road that was for sale for around $2 million. It was nearly 100 hectares, with large sections of swampy dairy farmland. Parts of it extended all the way to the Nepean River.
In Cowan’s eyes, Mulgoa Road was destined to be a major link in the future. The part of the property fronting Mulgoa Road, about 10 hectares, had already been zoned for residential development. Because of the residential zoning, he saw the purchase as a low-risk strategy, although it would be a massive investment for such a small club. The land would provide enormous development options for both the registered club and the football club. He became a passionate advocate of acquiring the property.
When he first floated the idea of buying the Mulgoa Road property, most people thought he was crazy. The price on the property was $2.25 million, not an amount that could be shrugged off easily. It had to be financed and the Club’s bankers refused. Undaunted, Cowan negotiated to transfer financial dealings to another bank where the management could see that the Club was going places and was worthy of support.
The criticism came from many quarters. One local newspaper ran the headline, “Roger’s Pipe Dream”.
‘People called it Frog Hollow’, says Don Ellks, one of the senior managers at the time. He says people were either laughing or sceptical. ‘It was very difficult to convince the Board, but Roger persisted and eventually won out. It showed enormous vision when he was being ridiculed from every quarter.’
Don Feltis, later a director at Panthers, was at the time a member of the police force in Penrith. He remembers a police inspector friend telling him the purchase was the worst decision the Club ever made. ‘It’s too far out of town. No-one is going to go that far to go to a club.’
Anyone who has ever visited Panthers’ Penrith club, exiting the M4 and travelling along Mulgoa Road, will know that the club is the focal point of a thriving commercial centre outside the city’s CBD.
But in 1971, once it left Penrith’s main street, Mulgoa Road was little more than a country road. It paralleled the Nepean River, heading out in the direction of Warragamba Dam. Along the way it passed through Wallacia, with its impressive Tudor-style hotel, seen by some at the time as an alternative to Medlow Bath’s Hydro Majestic for honeymoons and romantic trysts.
Former director Tom Wilson agreed that many people thought Roger was mad when he proposed the purchase.
But they thought he was mad about a lot of things. At one time we went and had a look at Australiana Village, out along the Hawkesbury near Windsor,when it came up for sale. We looked at buying other land in Penrith too, but at the time we thought it might be overextending. But Roger could see how that whole area was going to go ahead.
Phyllis Cowan remembers that Jamison Park — now one of Penrith’s major parklands with playing fields and recreational areas — was also considered by Cowan as a possibility to expand the club. It was covered in thick scrub and even further out of town.1
There was a lot of discussion about the land purchase, Max Connors recalls.
Many people in town were against it and some on the Board were not sure. But Roger was very persuasive, he saw it as a great opportunity.
Barry Hubbard said the criticism came from locals, club members and from Council. People were saying,
Why on Earth would they want to buy that swamp? You’ll never be able to build anything on it.
The view from corner of Mulgoa & Jamison Rds looking west. (Unknown source.)
After about four months of deliberations, the Board finally agreed to the purchase.
Penrith Rugby League Club 1973 Annual Report – middle page spread. Main image shows the Mulgoa Rd property with various points of interest. The smaller images are an early aerial shot of Penrith Park and an artsis impression of a club design. Click image to enlarge.
Hubbard’s first visit to the property did not go well. He had seen the property from the road, but once the decision was made, he and another director, Murray Clarke, decided they wanted a closer look.
We were in Murray’s four-wheel drive. We drove in about 100 metres, and the car was up to its axles in mud. “You’d better get out and have a look”, Murray said. I stepped down, and I was up to my knees. We eventually got the car out, and I went back to the club to clean myself up before I went home.
The boardroom had its own bathroom, so Hubbard decided to wash his trousers in the basin. It was the classic scenario of ‘one of these days, you’re going to get caught …’ . When sprung by the chairman, in his boxers, doing his laundry in the washbasin, he explained that he had just inspected the club’s new site.
Phyllis Cowan says she could never have imagined in 1971 what the Club would become. She could see the drive her husband had, though.
I think that Roger knew, right from the start. And I think if he was still there, he’d still have the same dreams and visions. He was always very conscious of what it was doing for Penrith, that it was putting the area on the map. His sense of community was very strong. Even in the early days he often talked about Penrith becoming a major centre in the state, and how the Club could help.
Pat Sheehy has been on Penrith Council since 19872, he says:
Panthers has been an asset to the city of Penrith for the very simple reason that people found out where we were. So, we benefited as a community by that exposure – and that advertising didn’t cost us anything.
The relationship between Panthers and Council has at times been symbiotic, and at others almost parasitic, says Sheehy.
What stage it was at depended on where you were standing. Often Panthers thought that we were the greatest mongrels on Earth, and just as often council thought the same about Panthers.
But the two have worked together on many community projects and are always ready to forget their differences in times of local crisis, such as bushfires and floods.
Council was particularly opposed to the development of a club on Mulgoa Road. One of the reasons given was the land’s proximity to the Jamison Hospital and the noise that a new club might generate. But the current club was quite close to the town, in what was essentially a residential area. Ellks says the neighbours were already starting to complain about the noise, and there were some problems with young people hanging around in the street. The Club was growing, so the complaints could only increase.
Although he wasn’t on council at the time of the purchase, Sheehy was living and working in Penrith, and has heard much of the history from council colleagues.
Roger had the vision for that land long before anyone else ever saw it. All the pundits around town were saying, “What do they want to move there for? It’s on the edge of bloody town, no-one’s going to go there”.
He was able to cut through a lot of the wowserism that was current in council in those days. I would think that most councillors were middle-aged men in grey suits, who were not really into the whole club scene.
And he had no background in clubs – it was quite brave. What he was seeing was enormous potential, where most of us were still seeing the country town where we’d grown up. He had this whole concept of what Panthers could become, which I don’t believe was shared by many people. He certainly had to convince the board – and he didn’t get a lot of support from the people on council at the time.
Yes, he was definitely seen as an upstart. Especially wanting to set up this huge expanse of club-land. They thought he was biting off more than he can chew, driving too far, too quickly. To some extent, I think the belief – and hope – in council was that this bloke will end up being put in his place.
That thinking was to continue, at least in some quarters, over the entire Cowan years at Panthers. One particular aspect irked Cowan for the rest of his life — how Council managed the disposal of two roads on the Station Street property. For further background seeBeyond the Book — Negotiating with Council: The Station Street Road Closures.
With the purchase of the Mulgoa Road property going ahead, Roger Cowan faced the prospect of raising the money to develop the site. Cowan came up with some unusual ideas about how to do it, says Tom Wilson.
Anyone who knows Penrith knows that there’s vast deposits of sand and gravel under the land all along the river, right through to Castlereagh. The quarries on the northern side of the city have been operating for many years. One of Roger’s early concepts to finance the development was to mine some of the blue metal under the new site. The idea was to sub-contract the work out to BMG, who would take it over the river to Emu Plains and process it.
The concept did not get very far. There was no way it would ever be approved, given the position and the need for thousands of noisy trucks plying back and forth on the edge of town, holding up traffic on the narrow bridge across the river. But he said it was typical of Cowan’s style, to look beyond what’s in front of your face and see what could be.
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Jamison Park already included playing fields, the scrub referred to here was at the southern end of the Park. ↩︎
Pat Sheehy retired from Penrith City Council in 2008. He passed away in 2025. ↩︎
With a broader audience now emerging, attention turned to what would bring people in — and keep them coming back.
Another early innovation was an in-house band, fully employed by the club. Rhind believes it was one of the first in the industry — and unheard of for such a small club. At the time, the Board was resisting putting poker machines in the upstairs auditorium area.
Roger persisted, finally convincing them to trial half a dozen machines upstairs for four hours on a Saturday night — between 6 and 10pm. He and a couple of the assistant managers would carry them upstairs and bring them back down again later.
The trial was successful; the figures increased, and the machines went upstairs permanently.
Rhind says he and Cowan were both in their thirties but most of the Board at the time were older men who sometimes found it a bit more difficult to cope with all the change being promoted by management.
However, they all shared a quality that would help overcome obstacles. They had a strong sense of ownership of the club they had helped build, and they wanted it to be secure for the future.
There were no hidden agendas and no ambitions of personal gain. It was about loyalty to a common cause. It was their club, and they would do whatever was necessary to protect it.
In the early 1970s the club began to put on prawn nights, other special nights, Sunday afternoon concerts and talent quests. Max Connors recalls,
Mum and Dad would come in for whatever was on, and they would always put a few bucks in the pokies. Roger was doing surveys all the time. He told the board that we had to start to give a little back to people to encourage them to come to the club, even though we might lose a little money on the prawn nights.
Bringing in the couples meant that women were starting to come to the club. It was changing the whole social scene. Back then, there were not many places that women could go, especially if they were on their own. They could come in either with a partner, or a girlfriend, and enjoy a regular night out.
The final shift away from the club’s traditional male bastion came with the launch of what became known as the “purple passion pit”, one of the new extensions to the club. Kevin McGrath remembers,
The room was quite stunning, with beautiful décor, purple furniture and fittings and large fish-tanks along one wall. It had poker machines, comfortable lounges and a full bar and it very quickly became the most popular area in the club.
Also, to attract the mixed market, the club began to focus on entertainment. This was an extraordinary time for the Penrith Leagues Club, says Bryn Miller, who was part of the club’s entertainment team in the seventies.
The first auditorium only held 580 people, so by today’s standards, it was not a big room. Don Ellks was the entertainment manager at the time, and he and Cowan formed an association with an agent, John Hansen. The Board approved their recommendation that the club set up its own entertainment agency as a joint venture with Hansen.
Through the new company, Prestige Attractions1, the club set out to bring in major overseas acts — performers who were appearing at leading Sydney nightclubs such as Chequers2, as well as venues like St George Leagues and Souths Juniors — artists such as Roy Orbison, Rolf Harris, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Hollies, and the Mamas and the Papas.
But we would get them on Tuesday nights — traditionally a dead night in the entertainment industry. Most artists didn’t get bookings for Tuesdays, so we could get them at a good rate. We would put on prawn nights, and beef and burgundy nights, and still charge reasonable prices. These shows were every second Tuesday, and the response was phenomenal. People came from all over Sydney.
We needed to find a way to get more people in, and at the time, there was a fountain in the middle of the auditorium. We ripped that out, and the room was able to hold 800.
We started to advertise in Sydney newspapers, which was our first real exposure out of Penrith. Here we were, this little hick country town, and we were really getting known out there.
Miller adds,
Sundays were another big night. It was Australian rock night, with bands such as Skyhooks, Sherbert, the Little River Band and INXS appearing in the auditorium.
But the building of success inside the club was creating pressures that could not be resolved within its existing footprint.
1982 Advertisement for the week’s rock entertainment.
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Prestige Attractions was a joint entertainment venture involving Penrith Leagues Club and entertainment promoter John Hansen during the 1970s. ↩︎
Chequers was one of Sydney’s best-known nightclub venues during the 1960s and 1970s, regularly hosting major Australian and international entertainers ↩︎
Clubland in the fifties and sixties was overwhelmingly a male domain — more a bastion than a business.
When Roger Cowan arrived, the ‘Long Bar’ extended the length of the building, and it was for men only. There was also the Sports Lounge, with its dartboards and pool tables. It too was restricted to men.
As in most clubs and hotels in those days there was The Ladies Lounge. This small room was the only place in the entire club where women — or couples — could go. It had poker machines and couches but didn’t have its own bar. The women were served by stewards from the other bars. In those very early days of the women’s liberation movement, the room had acquired the unflattering nickname, the ‘sow pen’.
Women were only admitted to the club as associate members. Full membership was restricted to men. Keith Rhind, who was a young director at the time, recalls:
One of Roger’s early pushes against the Board was to allow women into the bar, but there was a lot of resistance. One of the directors at the time was Lou Brown. Lou was real old school, a man’s man, and he used to growl, “Women! They’re like white ants. Once you let ‘em in, you’ll never get rid of ‘em”.
Contemporary attitudes within the licensed club industry could still be remarkably conservative. A 1971 Sydney Morning Herald article captured some of the prevailing assumptions of the era:
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 November 1971 — feature article examining attitudes toward women in licensed clubs and related organisations.
Cowan had analysed the figures — the men’s bar took up 80 per cent of the space but only brought in 20 per cent of the revenue.
By 9 o’clock at night, there might be only three people in the men’s bar and the ladies area would be full to overflowing to the point that some couples would just leave and go to the RSL.
This was especially so on Saturday night — traditionally the time for couples to have a night out – or on big trading nights like New Year’s Eve.
The revenue figures were common knowledge, but the men were very possessive of their space, and this certainly carried through to most of the directors.
Roger used to wander around every night, often quite late, keeping an eye on things. One late Thursday night after the trots at the local showground, he and a duty manager were watching a couple of men. One had big pockets inside his coat, the other was keeping watch while he cleaned out the drawers. They caught them and went to their car which was full of calico bags filled with ten and twenty cent pieces.
Kevin McGrath recalls how this played out in practice,
When a football game was on, it was stand aside or be swept up in the rush.
On game days they would pull the shutters down in the men’s bar so that the drinkers would go over the road to the game. After the game was finished, they would pour dozens and dozens of half schooners and have them lined up. There would be a mad rush from the football ground as hundreds of thirsty fans descended on the bar.The schooners were filled and the shutters went up. If you only wanted a middy — or perish the thought, a scotch — you just had to wait.
Cowan later said the changes were not a conscious move to overcome discrimination, but simply, a commercial reality.
We were trying to make ourselves more popular. We had to be all the time working out what was needed and then responding. The demand at the time was for much bigger accommodation for mixed company. We were squeezing them into one tiny corner of the club, where they were uncomfortable. There was no space, people were pushing and shoving each other, and often there would be fights in there.
I always thought that to run a club, or any business, you have to give the people what they want. At that time, it was being run for the convenience of a fairly small group of men who wanted to protect it for themselves.
The real shift came one New Year’s Eve — Cowan had convinced the Board to do a one-off and allow women into the Long Bar.
The Board finally relented, at first creating a small, partitioned area of the bar where women could go. “Roger persisted, and they were eventually persuaded to have a proper mixed bar, and the sales increased dramatically”, says Rhind.
“It took women a while to really want to go in there,” Miller says, “because that whole male bastion thing was all so entrenched. But the barriers were starting to come down.”
As those barriers began to shift, the club was changing not just who it welcomed, but what it offered — and how people experienced it.
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Foundation Member, Chairman and Long-time Penrith Clubman
Ken “Poker” Ausburn was one of the foundational figures of Penrith Rugby League Club and among the generation of local volunteers who helped transform Panthers from a small district football organisation into a major community institution.
A lifelong Penrith resident, Ausburn served the club across many years as a committee member, director and eventually chairman. Remembered for his humour, warmth and strong community spirit, he became one of the best-known personalities associated with Panthers’ formative decades.
Though he died in 1976 before the club’s later expansion into the entertainment giant it would become, Ausburn remained widely respected within Panthers history as one of the men who helped establish the culture and identity of the early club.
Role in the Narrative
Ken Ausburn appears within the early development period of the Panthers, Passion and Politics narrative — the years in which Panthers evolved from modest local beginnings into an increasingly ambitious football and licensed club organisation.
He represents the generation of volunteers and local administrators who laid the foundations upon which later Panthers success would be built.
Ausburn is closely connected to Panthers’ long campaign for admission to the NSW Rugby League first grade competition, and to the club culture that developed during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. His involvement reflects an era when Panthers depended heavily upon local personalities willing to contribute time, energy and leadership to both football and licensed club activities.
His life and reputation also provide insight into the strong community identity that surrounded Panthers during its formative decades.
Background
Born: 9 February, 1921, Penrith Died: 6 May, 1976, Penrith
Profession: Boilermaker; long-time employee at the St Marys Munitions Factory
Panthers Roles: • Foundation member • Director • Chairman • Hon. Secretary Penrith Rugby League Golf Club
Community Involvement: • Supporter of local sporting and youth activities • Associate with support for Police Boys Club initiatives. • Long-time Penrith community volunteer
Recognition by Panthers: • Life Membership, Penrith Panthers (1964) • Poker AusburnAward – for most improved Panthers player (now discontinued).
In 2017 Penrith City Council named Ausburn Reserve — between Nepean St and Annett St, Emu Plains — to honour the contributions to the Penrith region from the Austbun family and specifically “Poker” and his brother, Bob.
Known As: “Poker” — a nickname reportedly derived from the poker face he adopted while telling stories, joking with friends or “spinning a yarn”.
Relevance to Events Described
Ausburn belonged to the generation that guided Panthers through its difficult formative years.
He witnessed — and helped contribute to — the club’s evolution from football played at very basic local facilities to the construction of larger licensed club premises and ultimately the development ambitions that would reshape Panthers in later decades.
Bruce Turner’s Footprints on the Banks of the Nepean reproduces the cover of Ausburn’s copy of the proposal supporting Penrith’s elevation to first grade competition in 1967. Although the full submission itself does not appear to have survived publicly, the surviving cover reflects the determination among local administrators to secure top-level rugby league representation for the growing Penrith district.
Contemporaries consistently remembered Ausburn not simply as an administrator, but as a personality. Family members and friends recalled his humour, generosity and capacity to engage people socially. Those qualities appear repeatedly in recollections of early Panthers culture.
His life was also marked by resilience. Following a serious motor vehicle accident, Ausburn endured long-term injuries and health complications, yet continued working and remained active in club affairs.
When he died unexpectedly in 1976 at the age of 55, Panthers tributes described him as one of the “small band of men who pushed the club onto its feet in the very beginning.”
Funeral procession for Ken “Poker” Ausburn, May 1976. The accompanying tribute panel reflects the respect held for Ausburn within the Penrith community and Panthers organisation. (Click image to enlarge)
Legacy
Ken “Poker” Ausburn is remembered as one of the local figures who helped give early Panthers its personality and community identity.
He represented an era when the club relied heavily upon volunteers, local businessmen, tradesmen and sporting enthusiasts whose commitment extended well beyond formal administrative duties.
Although later Panthers history would become associated with major commercial development, political influence and large-scale expansion, figures like Ausburn reflected the grassroots community culture from which the organisation originally emerged.
His reputation for humour, sincerity and loyalty ensured that his contribution remained warmly remembered long after his death.
The licensed club was going from strength to strength despite ongoing problems between its board and the football committee. This conflict was to plague Cowan for fourteen years. He would tell every board member in those years,
This club is never going to be truly successful until we bring it all together – the club and the football. We have to be totally united.
There had always been two bodies. Merv Cartwright was the first secretary of the football club, while Cowan managed the registered club.1
Prior to the commencement of the 1967 season, the board of the licensed club had been asked to approve a budget of £40,000 to cover all rugby league-related expenses for the year. At the end of the season, Cartwright informed the committee that he would need £90,000.
The blow-out of more than 100 per cent was a huge impost on a club that was still struggling to establish itself. At that time it was easily the smallest registered club supporting a first grade team. Cowan was furious. So much hard work had been put into making the club profitable and Cartwright appeared to have little regard for budgets and financial controls. He seemed to have the view that there was a bottomless pit of money. Cowan says there were absolutely no controls over the football spending, with money continually wasted on unnecessary things.
When he took the job on the three-month trial, Cowan was confident that if he worked hard for a few months he would be on top of it all and then could take it easy. He was halfway through a university course as an external student of Armidale University. His plan was to get everything sorted out, and once that was done, “I’ll have plenty of time to study and take some time off”.
It did not quite work out that way. At the beginning of 1967, after 16 months of working 7 days a week, Cowan took his first day off since taking on the job. The Cowan family enjoyed a four-day break, driving to Broken Hill and returning via Mildura. The university course was never touched again.
Football expenditure in 1968 again exceeded the budget, and a couple of other problems had arisen with Cartwright during the year.
Eventually they called an extraordinary meeting of members. Realising the controversial nature of the event, they invited the mayor, Bill Chapman, to be chairman for the day. The Board’s recommendation was for the licensed club to cease rugby league funding unless Merv Cartwright resigned.2
Directors involved with the club during that period later described Cartwright in mixed but revealing terms.
Merv was an excellent PR man. He had the ability to influence and manipulate people. He did do a lot to build rugby league in the area and was very involved in the campaign for Penrith to join first division.
But he had lots of problems managing the money. Merv was always overspending, and Roger was trying to build a reliable business. That’s where a lot of the friction started.
The issues underlying that recommendation were more complex than this account suggests, particularly in relation to the Club’s financial position and governance arrangements at the time.
Around 1,000 of the club’s 6,000 members attended, with 80 per cent supporting the recommendation.
Cartwright did resign and moves were made to heal the rift between the two boards.
Sydney Morning Herald — Saturday, 20th March 1971
The District Club committee approached Cowan and asked him to take over as Secretary of the football club, a move that surprised him, given the history. The committee members said that they hoped such a move might help build a more co-operative relationship between the two clubs.
Cowan decided to give it a try. The move gave him responsibility for both entities but after less than a year, the frustrations of managing both sides of the organisation while reporting to separate Boards with competing interests proved unworkable. So, Cowan began advocating his policy to unite them under one board and one CEO.
On two separate occasions after his removal as secretary, Cartwright ran foul of the board of the licensed club and had his membership suspended. The board was adamant that he would never be allowed back into the club. This issue remained unresolved for many years, and intensified, particularly when his sons started to show outstanding rugby league skills and were selected to play for the Panthers.
The board received regular written appeals to lift his suspension.
Long-time director Barry Hubbard (1973-85)3 told of the meetings in the years after Cartwright left:
Every AGM, Tom O’Connor, who was on the board at that time, would stand up and ask for the reinstatement of Merv Cartwright’s membership. This would get a very cool reception from the chairman, Ken [Poker] Ausburn, and the ensuing debates were the fieriest I experienced in my whole time on the board. Ausburn and O’Connor would scream at each other across the room, and O’Connor would invariably end the argument with the words, “It is not British justice that Merv Cartwright, who has done so much for rugby league in this area, is barred from this club”.
Hubbard says the resolution was always beaten, and Ausburn would rule that the matter was resolved and was not to be raised again for the rest of the year. Apart from O’Connor the entire board was against the reinstatement of Cartwright’s membership.
At times, the disputes became highly confrontational, even farcical. In a heated discussion at one of those AGMs, the deputy chairman, Murray Clarke, who was the most vocal critic of Cartwright, was told never to venture into St Marys. If he did, said the speaker, he would never get out alive. It was Clarke who had previously cited Cartwright to appear before the Board after allegedly abusing him and threatening him in public.
The removal of Cartwright was to have ramifications for Cowan far into the future. The two had repeatedly clashed. Cartwright and his supporters blamed Cowan, not the board, for the loss of his membership. It was a festering antagonism that wouldn’t go away. In fact, it was one of the many small pieces in an intricate maze of events that would place Roger Cowan before Ian Temby in June 2004.
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At this time, both football and licensed club operated under the single entity of Penrith District Rugby League Football Club (PDRLFC). Separate committees had oversight of the football and licensed club operations. Penrith Rugby League Club Ltd was established in June 1967 to take responsibility for the registered club. ↩︎
This is Cowan’s description of what happened when the players were given the news that their pay would be “short”. This was taken directly from the manuscript.
We decided to go ahead with the picnic and pay the players half their contracts in the hope that we would be able to pay more later. When I turned up at the picnic, I found I was the only person from the football committee there. Everyone else, including Cartwright and the club’s president, had suddenly found they were unable to attend. It was up to me to explain to the players.
Most were OK with it, until it came to a player called Billy Tonkin. He was a terrific football player – big, tough, strong – and I’m sitting down. Billy’s next in line, and I say, “Bill, I can only give you half your money.”
Billy growls, “Yeah, Cowan, bullshit! You write my cheque out.”
I say, “Bill, I can only give you half.”
“Write the cheque for the full amount”, says Bill in a very menacing tone, leaning across the table.
The next bloke in the queue is Cec Reddy, who used to play hooker for us. Cec was only slightly built but he was a real pug. He used to box in the ring. Some people used to joke that he should sell advertising on the soles of his shoes.
Cec walks up to Bill and says, “Look, he said he can’t pay you, so leave him alone”. These two proceeded to have a big argument across the picnic area, but in the end, Bill did accept his half pay.
Max’s Notes
The drive to Bungool at Cattai — and back — felt long. The Club’s monthly journal even published directions for members to follow, a reminder of how different travel was at the time.
When I first read Roger’s account, I assumed it referred to the 1964 or 1965 season — certainly before Penrith entered the major competition in 1967. I can remember, even as a child, him returning home frustrated by events at the football club. This felt like one of those occasions, although there were many.
However, the reference to Billy Tonkin complicates that assumption.
Bill Tonkin (pictured right) was signed to Penrith in 1967. He is Player #11 and played in our opening game against Canterbury-Bankstown. Bill played 18 1st grade games in his two seasons (1967-8), scored 2 tries and kicked a goal for a total of 8 points. He was a lock forward who’d previously played for Balmain, Wests, and Souths.
If the player in Roger’s account was indeed Tonkin, the incident must have occurred in either 1967 or 1968 — suggesting it took place after Penrith’s admission to the competition. Alternatively, and almost certainly, the identity of the player has been misremembered.
Either way, the underlying issue remains clear.
The club had committed to player payments it could not meet. Those responsible for managing the football budget failed to address the situation in advance, and were not present when the consequences had to be explained.
Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 