From a Saturday afternoon session at the Sacky to an ugly street ruckus
At the Sackville Hotel in Rozelle, they call it the locals’ table.
Situated in the TAB section of the popular Darling Street pub, it’s often occupied on Friday and Saturday by high-profile sports journalist and television pundit Paul Kent and a revolving cohort of mates, among them colourful rugby league identity and former player John Elias.
The Sackville Hotel, Rozelle, is a regular haunt of Paul Kent.Credit: Edwina Pickles
So embedded is the group at the watering hole that the table has been permanently set aside for them, marked with a reserved sign, and has usually remained vacant even when none of them are there.
It was at the Sacky, as it’s known by regulars, that Kent settled in for an afternoon on the punt on Saturday.
Hours later, outside Three Weeds Rozelle, another hotel 10 minutes’ walk away and in the direction of his Lilyfield home, the 54-year-old Daily Telegraph columnist and NRL 360 co-host became embroiled in a violent altercation that threatens his decades-long media career.
A table reserved for Paul Kent and friends at the Sackville Hotel.
Video footage captured an intoxicated Kent reacting angrily to being “shit-potted”; that is verbally insulted by a man as he walked past him, branding him a “doghead” before removing his watch and resisting an effort to subdue him. Cocking his fists, he then charged at the 35-year-old, with whom he traded punches before the clash shifted onto the street in front of the venue and Kent was flung head-first into the trunk of a roadside tree.
The man he squared up to was on Monday charged with affray by police, whose investigation into the evening was continuing.
Kent, who was on Sunday stood down by his employer News Corp pending its own probe, had only returned last month to the flagship Fox Sports panel show after sitting out much of the 2023 season and working for a funeral parlour while he defended charges of domestic violence against his former partner.
He was found not guilty in December of choking and assaulting the 33-year-old woman, telling reporters afterwards he was relieved “the truth is out there, finally”.
“It’s been a big cost to me, it’s been a big setback in my life,” he said at the time. “But, we’ve all got our struggles in life. This is my one currently, so it’s up to me now to regroup and get back to my normal life. I can finally leave this all behind.”
While he was cleared, there has been concern at Fox Sports about his behaviour for some time and the incident on Saturday night may be one blow too many.
Kent is close friends with his boss, Fox Sports executive Steve Crawley, who backed him during his court case last year, but it was unclear on Monday what his future, if any, would be at the subscription television network and the Daily Telegraph, with both not returning calls.
Kent’s temper and appetite for confrontation has made headlines in the past.
Last year he had a heated run-in at an NRL season launch with Mike Meehall Wood, a writer with sports website The Roar who on social media had been scathing in his criticism of Kent’s journalism.
In 2022, he quit his role on Triple M radio, refusing to apologise to host Anthony Maroon over on-air jibes that prompted Maroon to walk out mid-show on the program they both appeared on.
Paul Kent, left, appeared in social media videos of a street fight in Rozelle.Credit: @86Dib
Four years ago, Kent also inadvertently became wound up in a betting scandal over the Dally M coach of the year award when wagers he and Fox Sports personality Bryan Fletcher placed on the eventual winner, Melbourne Storm’s Craig Bellamy, appeared on betting records provided to police. Both were not accused of any wrongdoing in that affair.
Instead, it’s Kent’s tendency towards aggression that has come back to bite him.
His presence on television affords him minor celebrity status in Sydney, where rugby league is king, and previous vision spread on social media has demonstrated that he has been baited while out in public, as he claimed to have been on Saturday night.
In one clip, which was posted by mixed martial arts fighter Tai “Bam Bam” Tuivasa and emerged after he was exonerated last December, Kent was on the receiving end of a horrific slur in a pub from an unknown man, who snarled at him: “I’ll smack the f--- out of ya”.
Kent did not respond to the abuse in that vision but in another video, shot in 2022 and seen by this masthead, he was held back by a friend from approaching a man in a bar. “Don’t film this,” Kent said in that footage. “Well, don’t be a c--- … don’t be a f---wit,” the man replied. Kent was ultimately talked into cooling off on that occasion.
He did not show the same restraint on the weekend in Rozelle.
Kent, who has trained in the past with legendary boxing trainer Johnny Lewis and wrote a biography on him, was visited at home on Monday by a series of friends. They included Elias, who played in the 1980s and 1990s with six Sydney clubs and served several stints in prison including for shooting a man and for drug offences. Elias was also charged over $5500 in bets he placed on the North Queensland Cowboys to score first against Canterbury in the infamous match between the two sides in 2010, but he was later found not guilty. His brother George, who is a lawyer, represented Kent in court last year.
Another to turn up at Kent’s house was former Olympic boxer Rick Timperi, who competed for Australia at the 1992 Games in Barcelona and in 1996 in Atlanta.
Once a promising young league player who made one first-grade appearance for Parramatta in 1989, Kent had a notable stoush with former Australian international Mark Geyer while they were playing in the Central Coast competition in 1994 for Ourimbah and Umina respectively.
Upset at one of the young journalist’s columns, Geyer made his fury clear as their two teams took the field to play each other, barking at him “you’re f---ing dead”, before pursuing and eventually launching at Kent during the game.
“It wasn’t a tackle ... [it] was a little high and a little late, [an] elbow behind the ear,” Kent told Fox’s Matty Johns podcast about Geyer’s retribution, which triggered a brawl and them both being sent off.
He went on to carve out a career as one of the most prominent faces in Australian sports media, firstly at the Sun-Herald and The Sydney Morning Herald and then News Corp.
He has been very well-connected with some of the most influential figures in rugby league, among them coach Ricky Stuart and the late Immortal Bob Fulton, and is known for his delivery of unwavering opinion.
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