Prosecutors have dropped all charges against current and former footballers Dion Prestia and Steven May over an alleged brawl on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in 2024.<\/p>\n
Prestia, a three-time premiership player with Richmond, was charged with recklessly causing serious injury and affray.<\/p>\n
May, who played for the Melbourne Demons and retired from the AFL just days before this year’s season went ahead, was charged with affray.<\/p>\n
The pair appeared briefly via video link in the Frankston Magistrates’ Court on Friday morning, charged over a streetside altercation with another group in the coastal town of Sorrento on Boxing Day in 2024.<\/p>\n
The incident left two men in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.<\/p>\n
“You are free to leave,” Magistrate Tony Burns told the pair, before they logged off the video link.<\/p>\n
Both had denied any involvement in the incident.<\/p>\n
In March, prosecutor Alex Turner told the court there was no footage of the alleged brawl, and that the case relied on the testimony of “two competing groups”.<\/p>\n
At that same hearing, defence lawyer Tony Hargreaves said some witnesses had said the players were not involved at all.<\/p>\n
“We have continued to provide information to the police to demonstrate that is the situation,” Mr Hargreaves told the court in March.<\/p>\n
At Friday morning’s hearing, Mr Hargreaves applied for legal costs to be paid for by prosectors, which will be finalised at a later date.<\/p>\n
“I’ve ordered costs in your favour,” Magistrate Burns told the court.<\/p>\n
Mr Prestia, 33, has played 244 AFL games with the Richmond Tigers and Gold Coast Suns.<\/p>\n
May, 34, played 251 AFL games and won a premiership with the Demons in 2021, before his retirement ahead of this season.<\/p>\n
He captained the Suns for two seasons before moving to Melbourne in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutors have dropped all charges against current and former footballers Dion Prestia and Steven May over an alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,317634,64,63,55,639,10966,1108,2973,17988,7804,1158,672,225698,85,8018],"class_list":["post-656939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-alleged-brawl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-charge","tag-court","tag-courts","tag-dion-prestia","tag-melbourne-demons","tag-police","tag-richmond-tigers","tag-sorrento","tag-sports","tag-steven-may"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656939","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=656939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}