Two teenagers accused in Wollongong District Court yesterday of bashing a drunk man near a Port Kembla hotel admitted to the assault, but denied attempting to rob him.

On the opening day of their trial, Ricky Steven Szwanka, 18, of Berkeley, and a 17-year-old from Mount St Thomas who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company.

However, Crown prosecutor David Williams rejected their plea and they will be tried over the coming days on charges of aggravated assault with intent to rob.

The 34-year-old victim was the first witness to give evidence yesterday.

He told the court he had spent January 27 drinking up to 40 schooners of VB at the Commercial Hotel in Port Kembla.

He had met his attackers in the pub just before he left about 7.45pm.

The man had told the teenagers he was going to smoke marijuana and they had invited him to smoke with them at a house nearby.

He had followed the pair down Wentworth Lane when he realised he could no longer see Szwanka.

"I said: 'Where are we going? Where's your mate's place'?" the man said. "He said to me: 'Give us your money'."

The man had told the 17-year-old to "get stuffed".

He had been hit in the back of the head with a bottle, which smashed.

The pair then repeatedly punched him, leaving him with his nose broken in two places, bruising and cuts to his head and face.

The man had told the pair he would get them and they had run off.

In his opening statement, Szwanka's barrister Peter Pearsall told a different version of events in which there was no mention of an attempted robbery.

He said when police first approached the accused minutes after the attack, they immediately admitted assaulting the man.

They had told police the man tried to sell them drugs and they had bashed him.

Under cross-examination, the man denied lying to the police about how long he had been drinking at the pub, and trying to sell the teenagers drugs.

The trial continues today.