Former NRL player sentenced for blackmail A FORMER NRL player's "appalling" blackmail of a Sydney postman was successful until he overshot the mark and demanded $100,000, a court has heard. Andrew Michael Frew was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment at the Downing Centre District Court on Tuesday for two counts of demanding money with menace in September last year. Magistrate Janet Wahlquist, however, recommended the sentence be served by way of an Intensive Correction Order (ICO) - a penalty which includes conditions such as community service and strict supervision. Frew's partner Louise Jane Temple, who pleaded guilty to making an unwarranted demand for money, was given a 12-month suspended sentence. The court heard that 39-year-old Frew had become "incensed" when Temple, 38, claimed the postman had abused her when she was working as a prostitute in Kings Cross at age 14. Initially driven by "righteousness and indignation," it soon turned into something more "sleazy" with the former player viewing the postman as a way of supporting a "raging drug habit," Frew's solicitor Martin Ricci said. According to police facts previously tendered, in August last year the pair arrived at the man's home, which he shared with his elderly father, and accused him of sexually abusing Temple. Threatening to tell the police, Frew drove him to an ATM where he withdrew $2000. Weeks later, Frew met the victim again and took $1000 before saying "the only way out" was to give him $100,000. "It was potentially successful until such point as you overshot your mark," Ms Wahlquist told Frew. Frew, who played for Parramatta, Manly and St George Illawarra in a first-grade career that ran from 1997 to 2004, had had a "majestic fall from grace," Mr Ricci said. Although Mr Ricci described Temple's role in the offending as "significantly less" than Frew's, Ms Wahlquist described her as "instrumental." While she accepted that the postman might have started a relationship with a teenage Temple, she said the former prostitute had maintained it for 20 years. Frew's matter will return to court next month to determine whether an ICO will be granted.