![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/35d56931b4e4bb1d82db522d598bd0c1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nA Victorian court has heard claims that former AFL great Neil Elvis “Nicky” Winmar was defending himself on the night he is alleged to have assaulted a woman.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A contested hearing continued today after Mr Winmar pleaded not guilty to charges including unlawful assault and intentionally causing injury over an alleged incident in May last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yesterday, the woman told the Bendigo Magistrates\u2019 Court she was “fearful” of her life as Mr Winmar smashed her head into a door, dragged her by her ponytail and grabbed and twisted her arm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During questioning today, barrister Dermot Dann KC put to the woman a different version of events, suggesting she “lost control” and started throwing punches at Mr Winmar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nicky Winmar arriving at the Bendigo Magistrates’ Court on Monday with barrister Dermot Dann KC. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“He was trying to protect himself and fend off your punches,” Mr Dann said to the woman.<\/p>\n
“One of the punches caused a cut to his face, which was observed by police.”<\/p>\n
“No, that is not true. I did not,” the woman said.<\/p>\n
Mr Dann also suggested to the woman that she had made multiple false allegations to the court to “make [the] incident sound as bad as possible for Mr Winmar”.<\/p>\n
The woman said she had not mentioned some aspects of her evidence to police before because it was painful to relive.<\/p>\n
A friend that the woman called on the night gave evidence to the court and said the woman sounded “hysterical” and “incredibly upset” on the phone.<\/p>\n
They said Mr Winmar could be heard in the background of the phone call saying: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”<\/p>\n
During cross-examination, Mr Dann questioned the friend’s credibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the witness stand, the friend admitted to giving misleading evidence in court, in separate proceedings.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Trieu Hunyh interjected during a combative exchange and asked the witness to “calm down a little bit”.<\/p>\n
Further witnesses are expected to be called when the hearing continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Victorian court has heard claims that former AFL great Neil Elvis “Nicky” Winmar was defending himself on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[24278,64,63,129552,314780,223612,85,314781],"class_list":["post-650729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-assault","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bendigo-court","tag-dermot-dann","tag-nicky-winmar","tag-sports","tag-winmar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650729","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=650729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}