Fallen stars: Geelong’s sporting guns who fell foul of the law
They had the world at their feet due to their sporting prowess, only for their reputations to be left in tatters due to sordid drug dealing, fraud and creepy sex offences. SEE THE LIST
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They had the world at their feet due to their sporting prowess, only for their reputations to be left in tatters due to sordid drug dealing, fraud and creepy sex offences.
Geelong has seen many of its sporting stars rise fast and plunge just as quickly, with former AFL players, Olympians, gun cricketers and local footballers among recent examples of fallen idols.
From armed drug dealers, sex pests, serial fraudsters and even a Tinder swindler, here is a list of some of the more shameful recent examples who have violated the law.
CAMERON RAHLES-RAHBULA
“It will mark my reputation for the rest of my life.”
Those were the words spoken by Cameron Rahles-Rahbula in mounting a defence into why he would record a topless teenager at an elite Geelong school, an offence he would be found guilty of this year.
Rahles-Rahbula, a father of two, was working as a physiotherapist at Geelong Grammar’s Corio campus when a year 12 student who visited him regularly was recorded topless with his mobile phone.
The dual Paralympic bronze medallist and former Young Victorian of the Year had never been in trouble with the law until he decided to prop his phone up against a tissue box, using his wallet to hold it there, during a session in October 2021.
He placed a towel in front of the camera after the underage student discovered it in an attempt to “conceal it”, the Geelong Magistrates Court was told in March.
He was found guilty of attempting to produce child abuse material and recording a private activity without express consent.
“What brings you before the court might be described as poor judgment or something planned,” Magistrate Simon Guthrie said.
“It seems to me it wasn’t very well planned, it wasn’t particularly sophisticated and nevertheless here we are.”
He was fined $5000 and placed on an adjourned undertaking without conviction.
CHRISTOPHER ALAN COLLINS
A former Anakie footballer and Little River cricketer confessed to fleecing more than $100,000 from three female victims during a damaging spree in 2020.
Christopher Alan Collins, who called himself ‘CJ’ on Tinder and ‘Happy’ on Bumble, told the women he was a “professional gambler” before convincing them to open betting accounts within hours of meeting, a Melbourne court heard last year.
The love rat, 34, confessed to shifting huge sums of money from their bank accounts to the betting sites.
On one occasion, after transferring $72,000 to a betting app, he even took the woman’s stolen credit card to the Centrefold Lounge strip club.
On another, he moved $14,000 from a dates phone to Sportsbet and TAB after she fell asleep at her Rowville home.
He also snatched another woman’s phone from a table while she was in the bathroom at a pub in Port Melbourne, transferring $8500 of her cash.
He pleaded guilty to 24 charges in 2020, including theft, fraud, dishonesty offences and breaching bail.
Bizarrely, his crimes were committed a year after he was released from jail for scamming six other women of $82,000 that he also blew on failed bets.
He was jailed for a maximum of 22 months in September 2022.
JORDAN JONES
Ocean Grove footballer Jordan Jones was drafted to West Coast after a blistering year for the Geelong Falcons in the TAC Cup in 2008.
Fifteen years later he would front the Geelong Magistrate Court convicted of recording his own mother-in-law and sister-in-law naked in an act described as ‘perverted’ and ‘creepy’.
The one-time AFL powerhouse pounced on the Bellarine talent with pick 52 in the 2008 AFL Draft, managing two games with the Eagles before he was delisted in 2011.
He stayed in Perth, playing in a premiership with WAFL club West Perth in 2013 before returning to Victoria to play for Williamstown in the VFL.
Fate would see him return to Ocean Grove in the Bellarine Football League as coach of the Grubbers in 2019, but his stint was short-lived – sacked midway through the season after just 12 games in charge.
The 33-year-old would plead guilty in Geelong Magistrates Court this month to three counts of using an optical surveillance device.
The court heard Jones unlawfully recorded his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law when they went to use a solarium at their family home on June 16, 26 and July 10 last year.
He recorded the victims on his laptop and had videos of them undressing before going into a tanning bed.
Magistrate Ann McGarvie said had “wrestled whether to record a conviction against (Jones) or not” but ultimately decided the offending was too serious.
“If a stranger had done this at a tanning salon it would be awful, but the breach of trust has affected their wellbeing and exacerbated the trauma that they feel from being violated, their privacy violated and their body recorded without their consent.”
A conviction was recorded and he was fined an aggregate sum of $8000.
BILLY NICHOLS
Former AFL player Billy Nicholls was sentenced to 11 years jail for shooting two men after his life spiralled out of control following a promising career with Richmond and Hawthorn.
The shock shootings were committed in the context of drugs and money, and represented serious examples of intentionally causing serious injury.
During a two week trial in 2015, A jury found the then 34-year-old guilty of intentionally causing serious injury to Khalid Alloush outside Nicholls’ then-Corio home in June 2012, and Scott Sheppard at his North Shore home in January 2013.
The court heard Nicholls wrote in his journal of his frustration with Mr Alloush in the lead-up to the shooting, and said that he had armed himself with a shotgun and planned to ‘take a stand” over a $100,000 drug debt.
Nicholls, a former Geelong Falcons player, had become “rudderless” after being delisted and began taking the drug ice while working long hours away from his family.
He played 16 games with the Hawks and Tigers in an injury-plagued career between 2001-04.
Judge Phillip Coish order the former AFL star to serve at least eight years in prison after he was found guilty on two counts of intentionally causing serious injury.
JAK JENNEDY-HUNT
Prodigiously talented and respected for his football ability, Jak Kennedy-Hunt is a cautionary tale of how quickly drugs can ruin lives.
The former Torquay footballer was sentenced to more than four years in jail in 2013 for trafficking methamphetamines, after police found “ice” in a car with a street value of $80,000.
After serving more than two years of the sentence, The former GDFL star – who won the coveted Whitley Medal in 2017 with Inverleigh – again found himself back in jail in 2021.
He was arrested and placed in custody over a string of crimes including a home invasion while in possession of a knife and screwdriver in August of the same year.
The charges included burglaries, possession of methamphetamines, trafficking cocaine and a home invasion, and came the same month he had been granted bail for a separate matter.
Kennedy-Hunt represented the Geelong Falcons as a junior footballer before playing for senior sides in South Australia and suburban Melbourne.
He booted a century of goals for Inverleigh in his best and fairest year, before having a stint at Winchelsea.
DAMIEN SHANAHAN
A former Geelong Cricket Club coach and longtime Geelong Grammar sports performance manager was disgraced in 2022 when he was found guilty of fraud offences.
Highton’s Damien Shanahan, 48, plead guilty at the Geelong Magistrates Court on charges of defrauding Geelong Grammar out of $5490, and then crafting fraudulent evidence to conceal the crime.
Shanahan, who coached the Geelong Cricket Club until he surprised the team by stepping down in 2015, was employed by the school on a permanent part-time basis for 12 years.
In early 2018, he asked the teacher in charge for permission to purchase video camera equipment that he would use to coach the cricket team. At that point, the court heard Shanahan requested $12,000 for the purchase.
When the teacher told him they did not have the budget, Shanahan was said to have returned a few weeks later and claimed a man he used to play semi-professional cricket with could give them the equipment for half the price.
In October 2018, after the school electronically transferred the $5490 to him, Shanahan said the equipment would be delayed by up to eight months.
A year passed, and Geelong Grammar launched an investigation.
Magistrate Simon Guthrie, who acknowledged that Shanahan “built up reputation and trust” at Geelong Grammar and then broke that, imposed a $2000 fine without conviction as a “compromise”.
BRENT MACLEOD
Prominent Geelong football identity, Brent Macleod, has made headlines for all the wrong reasons accused of leaving clients out of pocket in a number of unfinished jobs.
The dodgy tradie didn’t turn up to start work after taking a deposit worth thousands in 2020, leaving homeowners and contractors $60,000 out of pocket after declaring bankruptcy.
Macleod pleaded guilty in an Adelaide court in 2016 to failing to complete building work after taking deposits.
After facing court, he returned more than $6000.
The former Geelong Falcon was a star in the SANFL with South Adelaide before returning to Geelong.
He played with Ocean Grove before a stint with Apollo Bay, where he won the Mahoney Medal.
He also won the Whitley Medal with Thomson Tigers.
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