Now AFL strugglers Essendon have emerged as contenders with a reported $3 million free in their salary cap.<\/p>\n
\u201cLachie Neale, before Brad Scott was sacked, met with the outgoing coach about a future at Essendon,\u201d Mitch Cleary said on Channel 7\u2019s The Agenda Setters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand there is conversations and dialogue going on between the Neale camp and Essendon.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollingwood are still in front but it just points to where Essendon sits in the market right now, looking for a senior player with experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd they have $3m to splash in their salary cap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding one of the considerations for Lachie Neale is to play a Luke Hodge type role at a club like Essendon,\u201d added Tom Morris.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo walk in, rebuild it, and set it up for future success.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While Collingwood remain the favourites to sign Neale, he has also been linked to both WA clubs given his family circumstances.<\/p>\n
St Kilda have also emerged as a potential destination with coach Ross Lyon and general manager of football Lenny Hayes set to meet with Neale this week. <\/p>\n
Neale played under Lyon during his time at Fremantle earlier in his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my understanding Neale is expected to sit down with Saints coach and his former Fremantle mentor, Ross Lyon, this weekend,\u201d reporter Mitch Cleary told 7NEWS.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeale is in Victoria to play Geelong on Thursday night and right now his future is a hot topic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neale has returned to form for a resurgent Lions in recent weeks, just months after his split from wife Jules, who returned to WA with their two children, Piper and Freddie.<\/p>\n
Neale was alleged to have had an affair with Jules\u2019 friend, Tess Crosley, who denied the claims.<\/p>\n
But there seems to be no chance of the former lovers reuniting with Jules removing a tattoo dedicated to Neale.<\/p>\n
She had laser treatement to get rid of an \u2018L\u2019 on her wrist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lachie Neale\u2019s future has taken another twist just 24 hours after St Kilda emerged as the latest suitors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-772283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772283","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=772283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}