Save this article for later<\/p>\n
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.<\/p>\n
Got it<\/p>\n
Former AFL WAG Amie Rohan was on my radar at the gym weeks before we spoke. I clocked how one minute she\u2019d be deadlifting hilariously heavy bars, the next hoisting her newborn from his pram and handing homemade yoghurt cups to her two daughters. I didn\u2019t realise who she was but told her she was ace.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m older than her mum, but we became unlikely friends. One day, Amie needed an emergency babysitter. I was gobsmacked by the 5 million socks drying neatly in her laundry and the fact her kids\u2019 playroom had no electronic toys. Walls were hung with the periodic table and world maps.<\/p>\n
![\"Lachie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/562211f3e67d40cb329f92fd7dd2a35d9dd34694.jpeg\")
Lachie Neale celebrates winning the 2025 grand final between Geelong Cats and Brisbane Lions. Jason South<\/p>\n
My lasting fascination with Amie though was, and is, that she survived a public humiliation and a private grief with dignity when her then-Geelong Football Club player husband Gary Rohan left her when their youngest was months old, amid rumours of a romance with a club physio.<\/p>\n
Amie was suddenly a single mum and Gary earned a spot next to Wayne Carey<\/a> in the AFL\u2019s ranks of marital drama grubs.<\/p>\n Which is why, when the Lachie Neale story<\/a> broke, I thought of Amie. Since Christmas, she\u2019s been camping (with the kids and her new fabulous family man partner) so we haven\u2019t talked, but I reckon this latest AFL \u201cplaying away\u201d drama will bring back awful memories. And I bet she\u2019s drafted messages to Jules Neale, wanting to be empathetic without overstepping.<\/p>\n I\u2019d also like to support Jules. Weeks on, I still can\u2019t get my head around the Shakespearean scale of the implosion of her marriage to AFL untouchable Lachie and how it has the same archetypes of the Rohan COVID-hub scenario and the Carey saga in 2002, in which the former North Melbourne captain had an affair with his vice captain\u2019s wife: betrayal, hubris, a fallen king.<\/p>\n The Neale plot, no doubt already familiar to you, has a furious wife going scorched earth via Instagram, displaying not vengefulness but certainty. A former best friend leaning into publicity. A 2025 grand final photo of the alleged other woman with her knee pressed into Lachie\u2019s, apparent intimacy frozen in plain sight.<\/p>\n While I\u2019m aware an interest in other people\u2019s heartbreak is tacky, I want to know what comes next. Wondering if, assuming Lachie did stray, the alleged relationship that upended his life still holds any appeal now that it\u2019s stripped of secrecy and fantasy.<\/p>\n But most of all I wonder whether anyone involved thought through the question that sits beneath every affair story. Not even necessarily a moral question, but a practical one.<\/p>\n Will this be worth it?<\/p>\n Is short-term heat \u2013 whatever form it takes, sexy texts, the brush of a hand that feels more exciting than a full-body hug with a spouse, a hotel room rendezvous where guilt fights ego \u2013 worth blowing up good lives and risking everything for?<\/p>\n And you do risk everything when desire outruns good judgment. Because nothing stays hidden. Someone wants more and leaves a breadcrumb. Someone checks a phone. A gut feeling gets followed.<\/p>\n Related Article The reckoning arrives eventually, and it involves tonnes of collateral damage.<\/p>\n Home, money, trust, children. All in the gun. The boring intimacy of daily life that seems suddenly as precious as rubies. Think. Are they worth more than strange sex?<\/p>\n Yep, some affairs do lead to lasting love. But far more often what\u2019s left, especially when the kids are tiny, a la the Neales, is a ledger that doesn\u2019t make for happy reading. Lachie\u2019s appears particularly expensive.<\/p>\n He loses a wife who gave up her career for his, who no doubt did years of unpaid PR for the Lions (and don\u2019t think the club will look after Jules now. They\u2019ll raise the drawbridge.) He\u2019ll have to fly cross-country to see his babies. He won\u2019t be called \u201cthe great man himself\u201d by sponsors or radio hosts now.<\/p>\n Related Article And without a full mea culpa and not just a dicky pledge to work on himself, good luck with a post-footy media career.<\/p>\n The part that tends to get waved away when affairs are framed as emotional detours or private misjudgments is exposure that doesn\u2019t just end relationships. It redraws lives.<\/p>\n If the answer to whether it\u2019s worth it isn\u2019t an instant, unequivocal yes, then the self-destruction begins long before anyone touches a leg or lifts a phone.<\/p>\n Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.<\/p>\n The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"Jules](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767939930_831_82da9ade06d5d0f0091f2d72edf2f6f6595e4319.jpeg\")
Jules and Lachie Neale on Brownlow night 2025.AFL Photos<\/p>\n![\"Jules](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/561c85c8031759fcc8e5280638eb08e8b13e1bfe.jpeg\")
Jules Neale (left) and her estranged friend Tess Crosley on grand final day 2025. Instagram<\/p>\n![\"Lachie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767939931_389_33ec2fd7fc1bda0226d20de50421ca58a67a6c28.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Liz](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/b8bdbbf191db1111675b07ded6b24309dd8ce531.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n