Ricky Nixon was an AFL star who spun his success into a multi-million dollar sports management business. Yet the high-flyer spiralled out of control. Sue Smethurst reports that his business is in tatters, a sex and drugs scandal has forced him into hiding and police are investigating.
When Ricky Nixon called a press conference in March 2002 to announce that football hero Wayne Carey was quitting the game because he’d been caught having an affair with his teammate’s wife, few would have predicted that the highly respected sports agent who sat beside Wayne, crimson with rage that his number one star had been brought down by a femme fatale, would one day fall on the same sword.
The football world was in shock last month when news broke that “Australia’s Jerry Maguire”, Ricky Nixon, a man arguably as famous as some of the stars he managed, had allegedly been having an affair with the teenage girl at the centre of the “St Kilda nude photo scandal”.
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It was a bombshell claim that the 47-year-old married father of two, who was effectively charged with ending the media frenzy after nude pictures of one of his clients were uploaded on Facebook, was in fact having an affair with the 17-year-old girl who created it.
Ricky, who has managed the biggest names in the game, denied the claims of a sexual relationship in a Clinton-esque style statement that admitted to “inappropriate dealings”.
Yet the tech-savvy teen had an ace up her sleeve. After making explosive further allegations that they had shared cocaine and alcohol, she released videos that she had taken on her phone, allegedly showing Ricky cavorting on her hotel room bed in his underwear, and “sext” messages so explicit they would make Shane Warne blush. It was game over.
Once considered a powerbroker of the AFL, Ricky, who had forged a career spinning and saving the reputations of his often-troubled clients, was now in need of crisis PR himself.
He checked into rehab to deal with “a substance abuse problem that has impacted on my life and my decision making” and had his licence to manage formally suspended after a report by prominent Melbourne QC David Galbally, acting for the AFL Players Association, described him as dishonest and unprofessional.
It is a staggering fall from grace at the hands of the girl dubbed “a teenage Mata Hari with a mobile”.
So what of Ricky Nixon now? Those in the business say his career is over, absolutely unsalvageable. “What parent is going to allow their child to be managed by Ricky Nixon?” says a rival agent.
“He will never manage a player again and it’s a real shame because it could’ve ended so differently for him, but it’s all over now.”
Related: Ricky Nixon enters rehab
Yet those who know Ricky Nixon say the hardest blow will be to his ego, that this sex and drugs scandal will forever overshadow an otherwise extraordinary career.
Perhaps Ricky summed it up best in his book when he wrote, “It’s just the law of the jungle; a good manager will strike the right balance between what’s fair market value while not losing sight of pushing for the best possible deal for his client. One side burning the other is to no one’s advantage because there will always be another day when you don’t hold all the aces.”
Read more of this story in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Do you think Ricky Nixon’s career is over?
Video: The AFL sex scandal
