I’ve got a lot of time for Jules Neale. I think she’s brave, strong and honest, and she’s proven herself to be a woman who doesn’t take any prisoners.
She’s been humiliated and betrayed in the cruellest of ways, in circumstances that would have broken most women – and yet she hasn’t hidden away and she’s held her head high.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock over Christmas, her marriage to Brisbane Lions captain Lachie Neale – or the demise of it – has dominated national headlines, fuelled relentless social media gossip and become fodder for blokey footy group chats across the country.
The story reads like a tabloid dream – the famous golden-boy AFL legend and two-time Brownlow medallist, his glamorous blonde hairdresser and influencer wife Jules, her (former) close friend Tess Crosley and one very telling Instagram post.
That post – by Jules – was a defiant clapback to an article in the Herald Sun newspaper that stated, quite simply, the Neales were ‘working through their marriage’, having obviously hit a rocky patch.
Working through? Working through what exactly? There was no ‘working through’ anything, and Jules, 35, set the record straight in a now-deleted Instagram post that set tongues wagging.
I’ve got a lot of time for Jules Neale (pictured) – but the AFL boys’ club is trying to silence her, writes Amanda Goff
‘Yet somehow, amid all this, it’s Jules, the woman betrayed, who seems to have drawn the most criticism,’ writes Amanda Goff (pictured)
In case you missed it, here it is again, her words crystal clear: ‘I want to make it very clear that I am not “working through” anything. I have been betrayed in the most unimaginable way. All I can do is heal and do what’s best for my children.’
She did not clarify what the betrayal entailed. But, gone are all the photos of her husband Lachie, gone are photos of her former bestie Tess Crosley, she’s unfollowed the talent management group that was managing both her and Lachie and… well, we’ve all seen the photo, haven’t we? The one at the recent Grand Final, with Tess, her husband Ben, Lachie and Jules, with Tess’s knee seemingly pressed into not her husband’s leg, but Lachie’s.
The same photo, among others, that Jules demanded Tess delete from her social media saying: ‘Take these down, you idiot, you’re embarrassing yourself.’
I am in no way insinuating any wrongdoing but I can tell you this: if my close friend was nudging her body into my husband like that, I would be flipping livid. Ropable. I would have caused a scene more dramatic than any Instagram post.
So there you have it; the rumour mill is in overdrive. Lachie fled his hometown Brisbane, spending Christmas in South Australia. Jules returned to her hometown of Perth, and as for Tess? She’s milking her fleeting notoriety, posing bikini ‘thirst trap’ shots on her social media.
Yet somehow, amid all of this, it’s Jules, the woman betrayed, who seems to have drawn the most criticism.
People – let’s be honest, mostly men – are saying she should have stayed silent. Why didn’t she think of the kids? they’re asking.
Jules’ former pal Tess Crosley is pictured as she returned to her parents’ home in Brisbane
While the drama has unfolded, Tess has been posting bikini ‘thirst trap’ photos to Instagram
Jules demanded Tess take down this photo from her Instagram, telling her former friend she was ’embarrassing herself’
It makes my blood boil.
Scroll through any AFL footy chat, Facebook comments section or gossip thread and you’ll read the disdain many footy fans have for the wronged wife.
They’re saying she should stop ‘airing her dirty laundry’, that these kinds of matters should be kept private.
That she should be thinking of and protecting their two kids – Piper Rose, who’s four, and one-year-old Freddie.
As if it’s really her who’s upset the lives of those children.
That, my friends, is the AFL boys’ club at work, trying to gag a woman who has been betrayed, a woman who sold her hugely successful hairdressing business in Perth to move to Brisbane for her husband’s career. A woman who gave it all up for love and the good of her family.
These are the whispers of men trying to protect their beloved footy captain, using the cruellest trick in the book – weaponising Jules’ kids against her. And it makes me sick to my stomach.
I’ve had an absolute gutful of women being told to shut up and swallow their pain to spare their kids – when so often, it’s the men in their lives who are responsible for it.
I know this script too well, as do many of my girlfriends. When you go through a split or a divorce, you’re angry. More often than not you’re left to clean up a financial and logistical mess, as well as nurse your heartbreak.
But because you’re a mother, you’re told to shut up and suck it up.
Because we are mothers, it is ‘not helpful’ to show anger or criticise the men who hurt us. It’s unbecoming, not what mothers, do, especially those married to beloved AFL players,
And woe betide if you dare cause discomfort, live an unconventional life (like me), or move on with another man. You’re swiftly recast as selfish. Reckless. A terrible, terrible mother. The second a woman gives birth, she’s expected to disappear, lose her voice, her autonomy and sexuality. She’s expected to exist solely for the purpose of raising her kids, serving her man, and acting as a shock absorber for anything that might make any of them feel pain or discomfort.
It’s cruel beyond belief and cuts into the heart of any woman doing her best to bring up her children, while at the same time refusing to be silent about the truth of their marriage.
And if that isn’t enough, dear readers, men are allowed to do what the hell they want, because they’re, well, men. Especially footy captains.
Because at the end of the day – and you know I call a spade a spade – it’s not the kids the footy fans really want to protect, is it? It’s the reputation of their sporting golden boy.
That’s the power these players have with their lucrative sponsorship deals, and the unspoken belief that their wives really should ‘suck it up, and be quiet.’ For the children.
And now Jules has spoken up, she’s being cast as emotional, angry, unthinking. Why doesn’t she let the dust settle, stop making this so damn uncomfortable?
And that’s why I have a lot of time for Jules Neale. Because I have a feeling she’s just getting started. And my message to Jules is this: your children don’t need your silence and shame. They need your strength and resilience. You committed no crime: the betrayal isn’t yours to protect.
Every wife, woman and mother I know is in your corner. Including this one.
