'Remorseless' ex-AFL player Nick Stevens faces jail

Former AFL Carlton footballer Nick Stevens sent more than 2500 text messages to a woman he was found guilty of bashing, a court has heard.

Stevens, who played 231 games for Carlton and Port Adelaide football clubs, today pleaded guilty to threatening his former girlfriend after she had gone to police, saying in one message she would be "6ft under", the Herald Sun reports.

"It's going to get really nasty," Stevens told the victim during one exchange on August 7, 2013.

Leading Senior Constable Sontag told Ringwood Magistrates' Court the accused said his lawyers were going to "make her out to be a crack-whore" to ruin her and her reputation.

Magistrate Nunzio La Rosa said the former sporting star would feel "the full force of the law" for threatening and bashing an old girlfriend.

"This starts with imprisonment," he said, adding Stevens would receive no discount on his sentence for sustained violence against a woman.

"He's shown no remorse, he's accepted no responsibility," the magistrate said at Stevens' plea hearing on Wednesday.

In January, Stevens was found guilty of 12 charges arising from the abuse charges against a woman he went out with in 2012 and 2013.

A magistrate found he threatened to kill the ex-girlfriend and her father, smashed her face into a tiled kitchen wall and left her with a cut face after pushing her head into the external wall of a house.

Stevens called an ex-AFL heavyweight into the Ringwood Magistrates Court on Wednesday to help him beat a possible jail term.

Michael Malouf, Carlton chief executive from 2003 to 2007, said the charges were completely inconsistent with the person he knew Stevens to be.

"I saw Nick as being on the pathway to being an AFL coach," Mr Malouf said.

"He had all the attributes."

Stevens was part of Carlton's player-voted leadership group and the club vice-captain before a neck injury ended his career in 2009.

Allegations of repeated attacks and threats against his former partner ended a prospect of an AFL coaching career, the court heard.

Stevens' defence barrister Serge Petrovich said the 35-year-old had been in line for an assistant coaching job at St Kilda before abuse charges were laid.

Stevens was later told his coaching prospects were "gone and evaporated" because sponsors were wary, Mr Petrovich said.

Mr Petrovich argued people with profiles like Stevens' suffer additional scrutiny and damage to their career prospects.

He submitted that a suspended sentence of community corrections order would be appropriate punishment.

Prosecutor, leading senior constable Mark Sontag called for Stevens to be jailed.

On Wednesday, Stevens also pleaded guilty to a further charge of breaching an intervention order in 2013 when he sent more than 2500 text messages in three months to a person he was not supposed to contact.

He will be sentenced next week.

Source: Herald Sun