{"id":74272,"date":"2026-08-18T01:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T01:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/74272\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T01:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T01:19:11","slug":"disappointed-sydney-swans-coach-breaks-silence-as-four-players-questioned-by-police-in-relation-to-alleged-sexual-assault-in-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/74272\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Disappointed’: Sydney Swans coach breaks silence as four players questioned by police in relation to alleged sexual assault in Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney Swans coach Dean Cox has said he is \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d following an alleged sexual assault involving several club players at a Melbourne hotel.<\/p>\n

Four Swans players have been questioned by police<\/a> relating to the alleged incident \u2013 which occurred after the AFL club\u2019s victory over Essendon on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters outside the club\u2019s headquarters in Sydney on Tuesday morning, Mr Cox expressed his disappointment over the allegations.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, obviously extremely disappointed with what\u2019s happened and understand the questions and will update as we gather more information,\u201d Mr Cox said.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he expected any club sanctions, the coach replied: \u201cWe\u2019re working our way through everything with the AFL and the relevant parties\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Swans Captain Callum Mills declined to comment on the matter when he was approached by reporters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“I can’t really comment, mate,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s an investigation ongoing and we don’t have the facts yet so I can’t really comment.”<\/p>\n

Asked about the current feeling among the club’s players, Mills said: “I’m not going to comment”.<\/p>\n

“Once everything’s sort of sorted and facts have been understood, then we can comment.”<\/p>\n

It comes as The Herald Sun<\/a> reports that four Swans players \u2013 Chad Warner, Riley Bice, James Jordon and Isaac Heeney \u2013 have been questioned by police.<\/p>\n

A fifth player\u2019s manager has denied police talked to his client, according to the masthead.<\/p>\n

It is believed a group of five players drove back to Sydney in a rental car on Monday night.<\/p>\n

News24.com.au is not suggesting any wrongdoing by the players questioned or that they are under investigation.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Swans released a club statement<\/a> saying: \u201cThe Sydney Swans can confirm several players were involved in an alleged incident in Melbourne last night\u201d.<\/p>\n

“The Swans have notified the AFL and relevant authorities and cannot provide further comment at this stage,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

The club subsequently announced a press conference for CEO Matthew Pavlich to address reporters at the club’s HQ.<\/p>\n

“We can confirm that several players were involved in an alleged incident last night in Melbourne,” Mr Pavlich said in a brief media address on Monday.<\/p>\n

“We identified this to the AFL, we are working with them and also the relevant authorities on this matter.<\/p>\n

“We’re still piecing together exactly what’s transpired here and have our own set of internal inquiries ongoing, but safe to say we are extremely shocked and disappointed that this has taken place and the players have found themselves in this situation.<\/p>\n

“We understand the level of interest in the matter and there’s going to be lots of speculation, but given it is a police matter right now, that is all we can say.”<\/p>\n

A source told The Herald Sun, which was first to publish the story on Monday, that there had been allegations of serious sexual assault.<\/p>\n

A Victoria Police spokesperson said police were investigating a “report of a sexual assault in East Melbourne on August 17”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney Swans coach Dean Cox has said he is \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d following an alleged sexual assault involving several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[77,2304,2743,6505,260,1047,247,5009],"class_list":["post-74272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-afl","tag-assault","tag-coach","tag-dean-cox","tag-melbourne","tag-police","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-swans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}