Brisbane Lions star affair allegations and the one big question

Former AFL WAG Amie Rohan was on my radar at the gym weeks before we spoke. I clocked how one minute she’d be deadlifting hilariously heavy bars, the next hoisting her newborn from his pram and handing homemade yoghurt cups to her two daughters. I didn’t realise who she was but told her she was ace.

I’m 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’ playroom had no electronic toys. Walls were hung with the periodic table and world maps.

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.

Amie was suddenly a single mum and Gary earned a spot next to Wayne Carey in the AFL’s ranks of marital drama grubs.

Which is why, when the Lachie Neale story broke, I thought of Amie. Since Christmas, she’s been camping (with the kids and her new fabulous family man partner) so we haven’t talked, but I reckon this latest AFL “playing away” drama will bring back awful memories. And I bet she’s drafted messages to Jules Neale, wanting to be empathetic without overstepping.

I’d also like to support Jules. Weeks on, I still can’t 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’s wife: betrayal, hubris, a fallen king.

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’s, apparent intimacy frozen in plain sight.

While I’m aware an interest in other people’s 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’s stripped of secrecy and fantasy.