He overcame a number of serious injuries during his career to become the first Geelong player to reach 300 senior VFL games.
[7] After playing five reserves games for Geelong at the end of 1963, Newman was selected for his senior debut in Round 3 of the 1964 VFL season against Fitzroy at Brunswick Street Oval.
In Round 4 against North Melbourne at Arden Street Oval, he kicked five goals playing as centre half-forward, four of those in the last quarter, in a 37-point win.
[10] In December 2005, Newman was appointed as ruck coach for the Melbourne Football Club to mentor players such as Jeff White, Mark Jamar and Paul Johnson.
He also appeared on World of Sport on Channel 7 for seven years from 1981 to 1987 and had a column in The Sun News-Pictorial newspaper during the late 1980s.
Newman joined the Nine Network in 1989, appearing on a sports segment on In Melbourne Today with Ernie Sigley and Denise Drysdale.
On the radio station Triple M, Newman previewed Friday night and Saturday afternoon matches.
From April 2010, he was part of the Melbourne Talk Radio lineup, providing opinion and participating in talkback between 9.00 am and 9.30 am, during the Steve Price breakfast program.
[14] It aired with this name until June 2020, when Sheahan quit for a second time due to the fallout of comments made by Scott about former AFL footballer Nicky Winmar.
[28] The following week, Newman engaged in a conversation with Don Scott and Mike Sheahan on the podcast in which they cast doubt that Nicky Winmar's famous jumper raise in 1993 was about Winmar responding to racism, with Scott and Sheahan instead suggesting that they believed it was to signify a "gutsy" effort.
Winmar and photographer Wayne Ludbey took legal action against Newman, Scott and Sheahan, alleging defamation, with the parties reaching an agreement during mediation involving a formal apology and an undisclosed donation to an Indigenous charity.
He began racing in 1998 in Class C of the Australian GT Production Car Championship, where he finished in 10th place in a Ford EL Falcon XR8.
In the 1999 Australian GT Production Car Championship he raced a Holden Vectra GL to third place in Class D driving for Gibson Motorsport.
He then went on to finish in fourth place in Class D at the 1999 Poolrite GTP Bathurst Showroom Showdown driving with Melinda Price.
Before the next driver went out, the rain came down and Newman ended up over 6 seconds faster than the 2nd placed Porsche 996 GT3 of racing legend Jim Richards.
He started the season in the later model GTR in Nations Cup Group 1 as team mate to another multiple Australian racing champion Paul Stokell (who would win the 2002 NC title), but was bumped to the older Group 2 Diablo SVR when V8 Supercars driver Anthony Tratt re-joined the team from Round 3 at Wakefield Park and as a pro-driver was given the newer, faster car.
[10] In 2002, he released a compilation album entitled I Do My Best Work After Midnight, consisting of 13 selections from other artists, as well as two songs sung by himself: "Witchcraft" and "I've Got You Under My Skin".