Adelaide Crows coach Matthew Nicks reveals he was coward punched during neo-Nazi attack on Hindley St
Crows coach Matthew Nicks has revealed he was an innocent victim of a terrifying coward punch attack from a neo-Nazi thug during a bloody rampage through the CBD.
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Crows AFL coach Matthew Nicks has revealed that he was a victim of a terrifying coward punch attack from a neo-Nazi thug during a gang’s bloody rampage through the CBD.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Nicks told how the random and savage assault while socialising with mates in Hindley St in 1994 has had a profound effect on his future.
“It changed my life substantially,” Nicks said of the unprovoked attack that knocked him unconscious as an emerging teenage football star with SANFL team West Adelaide.
Nicks, now 48, is breaking an almost three decade public silence about the “life-altering attack” as he becomes the Sammy D foundation’s fourth anti-violence ambassador.
In a deeply personal interview with 7News, which goes to air on Monday night, the father-of-three told how he was out on the town with friends when he was 18.
He tells presenter Rosanna Mangiarelli, a Sammy D board director, how he was an innocent victim of the random attack as extremists stormed the CBD.
“The first thing you remember is friends all around you, blood and nose spread all over my face,” he said.
“Not really sure what had happened. I was … quite a mess.”
Nicks, who was drafted to the Sydney Swans AFL team later that year, suffered serious facial injuries and was treated at Flinders Medical Centre.
The high profile attack, which left at least 15 people injured, changed Nicks’ perspective on strangers and socialising in public.
He is helping the foundation – founded in memory of 2008 one punch victim Sam Davis, 17 – in its mission to stamp out assaults and educating young people on bullying as well as drug or alcohol fuelled violence.
During 15 minutes of terror on Saturday, March 26, 1994, up to 20 neo-Nazis wearing skinhead-style “uniforms’’ tore through the city’s most popular areas while shouting sickening Nazi slurs.
The riot, which sparked community outrage and a city safety crackdown, erupted at 10pm as the gang fought bouncers outside a Rundle St pub.
The shaved head, heavily tattooed extremists, wearing white T-shirts – some with British flags – braces, heavy boots and Nazi insignias including swastikas, rampaged west through Rundle Mall and then Hindley St.
They yelled insults, slogans and hooligan soccer-style chants.
Victims, most of whom were from ethnic backgrounds, described scenes from the 1992 Aussie film Romper Stomper, starring Russell Crowe.
The film depicts a gang of violent young neo-Nazi skinheads from Footscray, Victoria, who attack three Vietnamese Australian teenagers in a tunnel at Footscray Station, brutally beating two of them.
Sammy D founder, Labor Cabinet Minister Nat Cook – Sam Davis’s mother – paid tribute to Nicks’ courage.
“Matthew Nicks sharing this message with young people can only assist with the anti-violence message,” she said.
“The foundation has an amazing team working to provide skills and give young people the strength to understand that violence is never the answer.”
Nicks played a total of 175 games with the Swans during 10 seasons. He retired from football in 2005 after a string of injuries.
He was appointed as Adelaide Football Club’s head coach in 2019 after assistant roles at the Power and Greater Western Sydney.
Watch the full interview on 7News, Monday at 6pm
Best friend’s moving tribute for Adelaide club icon Paul Glen
The Electric Circus founder will be remembered as a ‘man who connected hundreds, if not thousands of people with an institution built from the ground up, mostly by himself’.
Adelaide entrepreneur tipped to replace Lib quitting politics
The founder of a high-end Adelaide store is expected to replace an outgoing state Liberal MP.