An ex-Dragon's player has pleaded guilty at the 11th hour to spitting on a woman's face at a popular nightspot after his bid to be dealt with under mental health law failed last year.
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Junior Amone, 22, arrived at Wollongong Local Court on Monday morning and changed his plea to guilty to one count of common assault on the day he was set to defend the matter.
The former five-eighth, who had his $500,000 contract torn up after a violent rooftop assault in Warrawong in 2022, was arrested over the spitting incident on August 4, 2024.
Amone was in the gaming room of the Illawarra Hotel when Tamara Duncombe - a woman he had a "fleeting" intimate encounter with - approached him about 2am.
CCTV footage depicted the pair in a heated verbal exchange before Amone spat at Ms Duncombe as she walked away.
Duncombe left the area with a friend after the spit landed on her face, with security guards escorting Amone from the venue.
He was later arrested at his Warrawong home.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Gray said the threshold to jail had been "well and truly crossed", especially since Amone was serving an intensive correction order at the time of the offending.
"It's not a controversial submission to say the act of spitting in someone's face is an act of degradation, especially where there is a prior intimate interaction," Sgt Gray said.
Defence barrister Angela Cook said Ms Duncombe had insulted her client's family and career during the argument, which were sensitive issues linked to his mental health diagnoses of anxiety and depression.
His decision to spit at the victim was "a brief, short, impulsive, spontaneous and unplanned act" while he was under the influence of alcohol, Ms Cook said.
Ms Cook added Amone had complied with all court orders, including 350 hours of community service work for the hammer attack, and that he has good prospects of rehabilitation after continued engagement with a psychologist.
Magistrate Michael Love ordered a report to assess the circumstances surrounding Amone's offending, which he labelled "disgusting and reprehensible", and adjourned the sentencing to February 25.
The magistrate indicated he would not send Amone to jail if the report confirmed his progress.
In September 2024, Amone made an application to be dealt with under mental health law in relation to the spitting, which was denied.
Hammer attack
Amone was deregistered after he was found guilty of running up a roof with a hammer and assaulting a tradie after a dispute erupted about the tradie's ute that was parked on the nature strip in November 2022.
Amone's father, Talatau, had smashed the rearview mirror and snapped the indicator off the tradie's ute before a group jumped on top of it.
Amone swung the hammer at the tradie who fell from the two-storey home he was working on, breaking his hands and ribs.
He avoided jail for his role in the incident and initially received a two-year intensive correction order, which was reduced to 16 months on appeal.
