Brisbane’s champion midfielder Lachie Neale’s tribunal challenge to his one game suspension has failed, meaning he will miss Saturday’s AFL grand final.
The dual Brownlow medallist will sit out the premiership decider against Fremantle unless the Lions can successfully further challenge the tribunal verdict at the AFL appeals board.
The Lions have until noon on Wednesday to submit a notice of appeal, which would likely be heard on Thursday.
Neale was offered a one-match suspension for striking Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan behind the play in last Saturday’s preliminary final.
The two-time premiership captain challenged the ban, arguing at the tribunal on Tuesday night that he did not punch the Hawks player as it appeared but body checked him to the ground.
After a dramatic four-and-a-half hour hearing, the tribunal upheld the charge and dismissed pleas for a downgrade due to exceptional and compelling circumstances of one of the greats of the game missing a grand final.
Lachie Neale is pictured at the Brisbane Lions Brownlow Medal function on Monday night
Neale’s clean suspension record across 320 games failed to convince the tribunal
As well as costing Neale a chance to be part of a team seeking a rare premiership hat-trick, it also meant he has likely played his last game for the Lions as he is widely expected to move to Collingwood next season.
Neale’s off-the-ball blow on Ginnivan was graded as intentional conduct, medium impact and body contact by match review officer Michael Christian.
The 33-year-old argued contact was made with his shoulder and chest and wasn’t a strike.
Neale said Ginnivan ‘might have taken a bit of a dive to get a free kick.’
‘My shoulder made contact with his body and shoulder first and my arm wrapped around Jack,’ he said.
‘But I didn’t feel like I was striking him at all. It was more a bump or body-check.’
Emma Field (left) posed with Neale and friend Gabrielle Scalzi in Brisbane’s rooms after Saturday’s preliminary final against Hawthorn
But tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC dismissed Neale’s version of events.
‘We find that this was a forceful blow delivered with a swinging arm and an open hand,’ Gleeson said.
‘When played at normal speed, it appears clear to us that this was, to use the common vernacular, a strike to the guts.
‘We are comfortably satisfied that this is what occurred; we find that this is what Neale intended.
‘We have listened carefully to Mr Neale’s evidence but we find it was inconsistent in key respects with what we saw on the video and, to that extent, we do not accept it.’
Neale’s counsel Adrian Anderson had argued Neale’s act was not a strike.
‘Whilst first-flush looking at this vision it does look like it is a punch to the guts, a careful and close analysis of the vision, and consideration of what Lachie Neale says, reaches the conclusion that it is not,’ Anderson said.
Anderson said even if the tribunal found Neale did strike Ginnivan, it should enact the ‘exceptional and compelling circumstance’ clause.
He cited the Scott Pendlebury case from March, when the Collingwood great had a one-match ban for rough conduct downgraded to a fine because of the clause.
Pendlebury had never faced the tribunal or been suspended before in his 21-year career.
And Neale, in his 15-year career, had also never previously been banned.
In happier times: Neale celebrates the 2025 premiership win with wife Jules (right) and her then close friend Tess Crosley (left) who former a relationship with the Lions star.
But Gleeson noted the Lions ace had been found guilty of eight prior reportable offences, including three for striking. All were met with sanctions less than a ban.
‘The purpose of the guideline is to stamp out this very sort of conduct. Neale ignored it and he knew the consequences,’ Gleeson said.
‘In the end, Neale delivered an intentional strike, off the ball, to an unsuspecting opponent.
‘To use the language that has been used more than once this evening, Neale intended to strike him on the guts … and he did strike him in the guts.
‘Being of Neale’s outstanding record does not render a one-match suspension for that act inappropriate or unreasonable.’
The drama of Neale’s availability for the grand final has kept him in the headlines that have followed him all year due to the high-profile break-up of his marriage.
His wife Jules left the marital home, taking their two children with her back to Perth, after the Lions player began a relationship with Jules’ former close friend Tess Crosley.
He has since formed a new relationship with a third woman, Emma Field.
