A former AFL club chief’s “state of mind” is anticipated to be key in his bitter legal dispute with his wife over an explicit photo posted to his social media, a court has been told.

Luke Sayers has denied responsibility over an X post that tagged a major Carlton sponsor with a picture of his penis last January.

The former Blues president is now locked in a dispute with his wife Catherine in the Supreme Court of Victoria. She claims a statutory declaration made during an investigation into the X post defamed her and caused “gossip” to erupt within the AFL community.

Mr Sayers claimed his wife said words to the effect of “let’s see how you get out of this one” the day after the photo was posted, according to his defence filed to the court this week.

He further claims he had left his phone in the bedroom of their hotel room in Italy, and the explicit photo – which he claims was taken for “medical purposes” – was posted while he was in the shower.

A trial date was set down for November 23 during a brief hearing in the Supreme Court on Friday morning, marking the first time the matter has been in court.

The trial was expected to run between five and seven days, the court was told, with Ms Sayers’ barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC anticipating Mr Sayers’ “state of mind” to be a key point of exploration.

“From my perspective … there won’t be an occasion for which there’ll be evidence about what in fact happened, but there will be a need for the state of mind of Mr Sayers to be assessed in light of some of the matters raised in the pleadings,” Ms Chrysanthou told the court.

She added that Ms Sayers wanted the matter to proceed to trial with a jury.

It will return to court on May 18 for a hearing regarding a cross application that the court was told was foreshadowed to be filed on Mr Sayers’ behalf.

‘My account has been hacked’

The post was deleted shortly afterwards, with a subsequent post reading “Sorry my account has been hacked – please ignore all posts”.

Mr Sayers made a statutory declaration weeks later on January 21 that Ms Sayers claims defamed her and implied she accessed his account without his knowledge and shared the explicit photo.

She argues allegations made in the declaration caused “gossip” within the AFL community, leading to her being “shunned and avoided” by people she knows and others who know her and her husband.

Mr Sayers claims the contents of the declaration were not made public until his wife launched the court proceedings, and it had only been seen and sent to lawyers.

He denies the declaration carried the defamatory meanings as claimed by Ms Sayers and that it was likely to cause serious harm to her reputation.

Mr Sayers also says the declaration used “careful language that sought to avoid any direct allegation that Cate published the X post”.