{"id":424557,"date":"2026-01-20T02:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T02:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/424557\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T02:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T02:50:08","slug":"afl-great-nicky-winmar-to-fight-serious-assault-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/424557\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL great Nicky Winmar to fight serious assault allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/espn.com.au\/afl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AFL<\/a> great Nicky Winmar will fight allegations he assaulted and intentionally choked a woman.<\/p>\n<p>The former St Kilda star, 60, appeared remotely during a brief hearing in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Winmar, whose legal first name is Neil, was in July charged with committing two assaults and intentionally choking, &#8220;strangling or suffocating&#8221; a woman.<\/p>\n<p>The three incidents all allegedly happened in Melbourne on July 18, 2025, charge sheets state.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\" lazyload lazyload\" data-image-container=\".inline-photo\" height=\"320\" width=\"570\"\/>Nicky Winmar.\u00a0Photo by Mark Kolbe\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors previously indicated they were seeking to join the case with separate charges Winmar is facing in Kerang.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s alleged Winmar twisted a woman&#8217;s arm and dragged her by the hair in Cohuna, northwest of Echuca, on May 14, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s unclear from the redacted charge sheets whether there is one alleged victim or multiple alleged victims across the two incidents.<\/p>\n<p>Winmar&#8217;s barrister Dermot Dann KC on Tuesday told the court prosecutors were no longer seeking to have the two cases heard together.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the two sets of charges will be dealt with separately in Melbourne and Kerang.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dann said the Melbourne charges could not be resolved and Winmar was seeking to fight the &#8220;serious&#8221; allegations in a contested hearing.<\/p>\n<p>The barrister indicated the facts of the case were disputed.<\/p>\n<p>Magistrate Kieran Gilligan adjourned the case to a one-day hearing at Melbourne Magistrates Court on August 11.<\/p>\n<p>Winmar, who did not speak during the brief hearing, had his bail extended to that date.<\/p>\n<p>He is separately due to face Kerang Magistrates Court on January 29 over the Cohuna offending.<\/p>\n<p>Winmar became the first Aboriginal footballer to play 200 games in the league, finishing his career with 230 games at St Kilda and 21 for the Western Bulldogs.<\/p>\n<p>He fought back against a number of acts of racism throughout his career, including famously standing in front of a Collingwood crowd abusing him in 1993, lifting his jumper and proudly pointing at his skin.<\/p>\n<p>Winmar is co-leading a landmark racism class action against the AFL in the Victorian Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AFL great Nicky Winmar will fight allegations he assaulted and intentionally choked a woman. The former St Kilda&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-424557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}