{"id":913559,"date":"2026-10-02T14:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913559\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T14:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:52:11","slug":"afl-news-2026-brisbane-lions-chairman-andrew-wellington-takes-dig-at-lachie-neale-collingwood-magpies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913559\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL news 2026: Brisbane Lions chairman Andrew Wellington takes dig at Lachie Neale, Collingwood Magpies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brisbane<\/a> chairman Andrew Wellington had his audience cackling \u2013 and may have ruffled Magpie feathers \u2013 when he cracked a joke about Collingwood<\/a> fans in a farewell to Lachie Neale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wellington spared some words for the Collingwood-bound Neale<\/a> in his speech at Brisbane\u2019s end-of-season awards ceremony on Thursday night, ahead of the dual Brownlow Medallist\u2019s expected move to the Magpies in the trade period next week.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lachie Neale celebrating the Lions\u2019 three-peat.\u00a0Russell Freeman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to just acknowledge Lachie Neale, who we now know is going to the dark side,\u201d Wellington said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake a last look at Lachie because he\u2019s going tomorrow to have some teeth removed and a bit more ink.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laughter and applause broke out as the Lions boss rolled out the sledge with a sly grin.<\/p>\n

But he followed up the dig with some classy words \u2013 for both Neale and the Magpies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shouldn\u2019t joke \u2013 he\u2019s going to a club we genuinely have a lot of respect for and a great rivalry with,\u201d Wellington said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile of course we\u2019re sad to see Lachie go, you go with nothing but gratitude from us.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou came to us at the end of 2018, a year in which we won five matches and finished 15th.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019ve been a critical part of the resurgence of our club since then.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, and we wish you all the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collingwood declined to comment when contacted by nine.com.au after the Brisbane chairman\u2019s jab at Magpie supporters, who for decades have been the butt of jokes about missing teeth and heavy tattoo work.<\/p>\n

As he celebrated winning a third successive premiership with Brisbane<\/a>, Neale made official his expected move to Collingwood on a three-year deal worth a reported $900,000 per year.<\/p>\n

The Lions are expecting to land an end-of-first-round draft pick as compensation for losing the dual Brownlow Medallist to Collingwood as an unrestricted free agent.<\/p>\n

Young superstar Will Ashcroft won the Merrett-Murray Medal as Brisbane\u2019s club champion on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

The dual Norm Smith Medallist also shared the honours of best finals player with fellow midfielder Josh Dunkley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane chairman Andrew Wellington had his audience cackling \u2013 and may have ruffled Magpie feathers \u2013 when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-913559","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\/913559","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=913559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}