AFL manager at centre of teen sex, drugs sting

AFL player manager Ricky Nixon. Photo / Supplied

The sordid underbelly of Australia's major football code continues to be exposed as the nation is subjected to yet further allegations of booze, drugs and sex.

This time the spotlight is on Ricky Nixon, one of the AFL's most influential player managers, and a disturbed 17-year-old girl who appears to have entrapped Nixon in a continuing campaign of revenge against the code.

The girl, whose name has been suppressed by the courts, has supplied the media with secretly taped footage of a man she alleges is Nixon cavorting semi-naked in her hotel room.

She has also alleged that the pair used cocaine and other drugs, and that she had been involved in a sexual relationship with 47-year-old Nixon.

Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper, which paid for the girl's room for two nights, photographed Nixon leaving the hotel and said yesterday that analysis of a packet supplied by the teenager had tested positive for cocaine, opiates and amphetamines.

Police arrested the girl on Monday night and questioned her about drugs and illegal surveillance, but released her without charge.

Nixon's career is in serious doubt, with his future expected to be decided tomorrow night at a meeting of the AFL Players' Association's agent accreditation board, which Nixon will not attend.

He is believed to have left Australia on a business trip to Ireland.

The Players' Association has offered psychological help.

The latest scandal, which had its beginnings in a sexual liaison between the girl and two St Kilda players last May, is just the latest in a series of blows for both AFL and league.

The two codes have been rocked by repeated incidents involving sex, drugs, alcohol and violence, despite falling tolerance, increasing penalties and concerted efforts to clean up the nation's footballing image.

The AFL's latest woes began when the girl, then 16, alleged that she had become pregnant after having sex with two St Kilda players she had met at a school football clinic in February last year.

The girl said she had subsequently miscarried.

Police and the AFL later cleared the players of wrongdoing after an investigation established that they had met the girl at a victory celebration after a game against the Swans in March.

The girl later told the Age newspaper that she had dreamed of a career in sport, but that last year she had instead "gone off the rails", and had been arrested several times for shoplifting, drug use, assault and trespass.

She said she had escaped each charge without conviction and had felt invincible.

But in December she took revenge, posting lewd pictures of St Kilda players Nick Riewoldt and Nick Dal Santo - both clients of Nixon - on Facebook.

Another player, Zac Dawon, also appeared, partly dressed.

The girl claimed she had taken the pictures in a Melbourne hotel room, but later admitted this was untrue: they had instead been taken by players in Miami and had been stolen from a teammate's computer.

The girl said she had used the pictures to take revenge on players and the code for the way she had been treated after revealing her pregnancy, and was forced to recant after legal action.

Her allegations against Nixon appear likely to be far more serious, even if the truth cannot be established: Nixon had been warned against seeing her, and he has admitted his dealings had been "inappropriate".

In career terms, they may well have been lethally stupid.

The girl has claimed to have been in a sexual relationship with Nixon for about a month, and has supported her allegation with photographs and footage taken on her mobile phone, since shown on television.

The girl told Austereo radio the affair had started with two or three liaisons a week but, after Nixon began trusting her, "from then on it was basically sort of every night, then he stayed over for a period of three nights in a row".

In footage supplied to TV stations to prove her claims, in which a shower is heard in the background, the girl takes a BlackBerry mobile phone bearing Nixon's image and name from a pair of jeans on the floor, and shows passes and credit cards from what she says is his wallet.

The footage also shows white powder - allegedly cocaine - on a table, and a man whose face cannot be identified taking off his pants and climbing on to a bed.

In radio interviews Nixon said he had only wanted to help the girl, denied using drugs or having sex with her, and said the taped footage had been doctored.

"She ... shows a video that purports to show me in a hotel room with her. Yes, I was, [but] it doesn't show me having sex with her. I've never had sex with her."