{"id":140843,"date":"2025-09-13T19:12:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140843\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T19:12:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:12:12","slug":"brisbanes-lachie-neale-pursues-miracle-comeback-from-injury-afl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140843\/","title":{"rendered":"Brisbane\u2019s Lachie Neale pursues miracle comeback from injury – AFL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Brisbane star Lachie Neale<\/a> is leaving no stone unturned in his near-impossible bid to make it back to the finals, depending on how deep his side goes into September.<\/p>\n

On top of the heavy qualifying final loss to Geelong, the Lions lost their two-time Brownlow medallist to a calf injury, the week he returned from a quad issue.<\/p>\n

Everyone’s heart sank when Neale abruptly stopped running on the MCG with the ball in hand, and since then, have quickly ruled a line through the reigning premiers returning to the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n

But with a heartbeat still pounding, and a mouth-watering match-up against Gold Coast at the Gabba, Neale is doing everything in his power to give himself, as he put it, “a one or two per cent” chance of playing.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been sitting in one of these things (hyperbaric chambers) for a few hours a day, trying to do everything I can, just in case,” Neale said on\u00a0Triple M.<\/p>\n

“But I’m just in there watching Netflix. And I’m willing to do it. I’m told it can help one or two per cent.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, it won’t hurt with the rehab if I can’t get up for any game for the rest of the year anyway.”<\/p>\n

Brisbane and the AFL<\/a> world don’t see Neale returning before the end of September, with the club listing his estimated return as 2026.<\/p>\n

But the ever-optimistic on-baller refuses to give up, offering the main reason why he’ll continue to get to work every day in the pursuit of premiership success.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

“I’m telling myself there’s a chance,” Neale said optimistically.<\/p>\n

“I think everyone else has said I’m no chance, and medically, it’s going to be pretty tough.<\/p>\n

“I’m just giving myself every single chance. For me, I’m one of those people, that if I didn’t do everything right to give myself a one or two per cent chance, then in 20 years time, if the boys happen to make the grand final, and I look back and thought, imagine if I did something differently or tried everything, and it worked, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.<\/p>\n

“I’m absolutely smashing this rehab, and we’ll see what happens. It’s a very, very slim chance.”<\/p>\n

If the Lions were to overcome a raging Suns outfit in front of the home crowd, they would face Collingwood at the MCG before reaching the final Saturday in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane star Lachie Neale is leaving no stone unturned in his near-impossible bid to make it back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-140843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}