Once a dominant AFL star with a lasting legacy on the field, former St Kilda player Nicky Winmar has been stripped of his honours in a dramatic fall from grace.

The 60-year-old, who played 251 games over a 13-season career, was sentenced to a six month jail term this week over a violent alcohol-fuelled assault on a woman last May.

Winmar, who maintains his innocence, remains on bail pending an appeal against both his conviction and sentence.

Following a hearing in which he vigorously defended the charges in July, Winmar was found guilty of three assault charges stemming from an incident at a motel in northern Victoria.

The woman, who cannot be named, described being afraid for her life and said she has now “lost faith and trust in everybody”.

“I am a shadow of the person I once was,” she said.

The court was told Winmar had been drinking when he began screaming and attacking the woman “out of nowhere”.

He was found to have twisted the woman’s arm, dragged her by the hair and smashed her head into a door four times in the violent outburst.

The woman said she managed to lock herself in a motel room and call triple-0, waiting an hour for police to arrive while cowering under a blanket with Winmar circling outside.

Following the verdict, Winmar’s actions were condemned by the AFL, with the sport’s governing body, the AFL Commission, removing him from the game’s Hall of Fame.

AFL Commission chairman Craig Drummond said Winmar’s place was “inappropriate” following the conviction.

“Violence against women has no place. Not in our community, not in our game, and not in the values the Australian Football Hall of Fame seeks to uphold,” he said.

St Kilda, where Winmar played much of his career, also moved to suspend the former two times best and fairest award winner from the club’s Hall of Fame.

The WA Football Hall of Fame has placed his status under review.

A bronze monument outside Perth’s Optus Stadium was also quickly removed, with WA Premier Roger Cook saying it was “important we send a strong message to the community”.

“Following Nicky Winmar’s conviction, I’m of the firm view that it is no longer appropriate for that statue to be displayed,” he said.

The monument, installed in 2019, captured the moment Winmar lifted his guernsey and pointed to his skin after being subjected to racial abuse from Collingwood fans in a 1993 game.

His actions ignited a national discussion on racism in sports and were credited with leading to the AFL creating anti-vilification policies.

During a pre-sentence hearing in early August, Winmar’s barrister Dermot Dann KC said the awards and recognition “meant a lot” to Winmar, who maintains he is innocent.

“They can erase his statue and they can erase his names from their Hall of Fames,” he said.

“What they’ll never be able to erase … in the hearts of minds of the many, many people who care about racism and intolerance and injustice, is the memory of his courageous stand that day in the face of vitriol.”

Winmar’s “iconic” actions were referenced in magistrate Trieu Huynh, who said he had risen from a challenging childhood to “scale the heights of the sporting world”.

His stand demonstrated his pride in his Aboriginal heritage and that racism had no place in society, the magistrate said, accepting that Winmar had suffered “extra-curial” punishment when his name was stripped from the Hall of Fame and statue removed.

Mr Dann told the court Winmar had “plenty of highlights” in his life but he’d also faced significant challenges, including a long-term battle with problematic alcohol consumption.

He was drinking daily at the time of the incident, the court was told, but had since abstained and was one year sober.

Around the time of the offending, Mr Dann said Winmar was “basically homeless” and a “really broken man” but, in the year since, he’d made significant efforts to get his life back on track.

“I accept you have made significant efforts at rehabilitation and your prospects do appear good,” the magistrate said.

The court was told Winmar had priors for injuring a taxi driver following an AFL game in 2019, where he punched the driver in the head six times and knocked him to the ground, and an assault on a woman on Christmas Day in 1999.

Mr Huynh said it was clear Winmar had a “detrimental relationship with alcohol that had plagued you over many years”.

“It seems whenever you’ve been involved in criminal infractions, alcohol has been a common theme,” he said.

Mr Dann said Winmar had suffered plenty of concussions in his lengthy career, with investigations now underway to explore the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – a brain disease linked to repeated head knocks.

He suffers from headaches, confusion, an inability to concentrate, poor memory and mental health issues.

“Physically, the legacy of football is that his body is ravaged,” Mr Dann said.

“That is the concern, yes, that he does have an injury, a brain injury, associated with those concussions, it’s under investigation.”

Mr Dann said his client had also been subjected to abuse in public following the verdict.

The former footballer is expected to appeal his sentence and conviction in the Victorian County Court.

Winmar will also contest allegations he assaulted and choked, strangled or suffocated a woman in July last year at a second hearing in December.