Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Veteran AFL journalist Caroline Wilson has taken aim at Jules Neale and Tess Crosley over their duelling tell-all interviews about the Lachie Neale cheating saga, questioning why either woman decided to air the messy details publicly.
The two women separately broke their silence last week about the scandal that engulfed the Brisbane Lions star and the breakdown of his marriage to Jules during the off-season.
Jules went first, sitting down for a candid interview on the Pretty Sure podcast where she alleged her estranged husband had cheated on her with not only Tess, but at least two women.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world,’’ Jules said.
“You just question everything. You’re like, who knows about this? Am I the only person that doesn’t know? Does everybody else know, and did the other players know? Did the other partners know?
“You kind of question your trust with everything and everyone at that point. It’s not a good feeling. But after talking to the other partners at the club, they all seemed very shocked, so I don’t think it was a known thing among them all, which is good because that would have been more salt in the wound to know everyone knew before you.”
Tess then gave her version of events to the Daily Mail’s The Debrief podcast, admitting she had made decisions she “deeply regrets” while claiming Lachie had “lovebombed” her during their affair.
Now Wilson has weighed into the very public airing of dirty laundry, and she is less interested in picking sides than questioning why it is being aired at all.
Speaking on Channel 7’s Agenda Setters on Monday, Wilson said she could not understand what either woman hoped to achieve by sharing such personal details, particularly on the eve of the AFL finals.
“Jules Neale and Tess Crosley both gave so-called tell-all interviews last week on the eve of the AFL finals campaign — a campaign in which Jules Neales’ estranged husband Lachie is expected to feature heavily,” Wilson said during her regular Caro’s Call segment.
“For the purposes of this ‘call’ I watched, read, listened to both of these interviews and I cannot understand why either woman chose to do it, who is advising them and what they thought it would achieve.
“I make absolutely no comment on the deeply private details that went so very public last week with all that extraordinary influencing detail.
“Nor do I have any clue on whether this will affect Lachie Neale or whether I care whether it affects Brisbane’s finals campaign. Nor do I have any particular sympathy for Lachie Neale at this stage. Nor am I taking sides in any way at all.
“But I say again to these two women, who by increments last summer broke the story themselves on social media of this big marriage break-up — why, in an era, where social media and their hits reign supreme, why they chose to communicate their private lives in this way.”
Wilson’s take certainly got people talking — although plenty online were not buying what she was selling.
Thousands of viewers responded on social media, with many throwing their support behind Jules and arguing she had every right to publicly tell her side of a story that had already played out under an enormous spotlight.
“Jules had every right to address the public of her side of the story in an interview,” one person wrote.
“Why wouldn’t they?! Lachie deserves whatever he gets… these men in football think they can behave however they like with no consequences,” another added.
“Her life was turned upside down! Her husband cheated on her with her best friend! She had to move states, raise her kids predominantly by herself… so she should give her story, and share it loudly,” a third wrote.
Jules reveals how she discovered the alleged affair
Jules, a 36-year-old hairdresser and influencer, said she learned about Neale’s alleged affair with Tess through the partner of another Brisbane Lions player.
“The poor thing, (she’s) a close friend of mine,’’ Jules said.
“It came from another partner at the club to her, she called one of my close friends at the club. This is the information I know and what I’ve seen. I don’t want to have to call Jules and tell her, ‘Can you do it? It would be better coming from you.
“So my poor friend had to call me and tell me.”
But Jules claimed it was not the first time she had discovered Lachie had been unfaithful.
She revealed she had previously received the dreaded “hey girly” message, complete with receipts, and spent four days in bed after learning of the alleged betrayal.
“I found out he had cheated on me before,’’ she continued.
“I got one of those awful ‘hey girly’ DMs with receipts. The worst day of my life; I didn’t leave bed for four days. Before that I would have bet my life that he would have never done that to me ever.
“Then I was reassured that was a one-off thing, it would never happen again, biggest mistake of his life, yada yada yada.
“We already had my daughter together, so I decided to stay and try to work on it. I just felt like after that people can make mistakes.
“And if it was a one-off mistake, I don’t want to break up our family because of it. I’ve got too much at stake here for her.
“So I did stay. It was really hard. If something like this happens to you in your relationship, if you get cheated on, betrayed in any way, leaving is so hard and scary, but staying is hard as well.”
Jules shuts down swinging rumours
Jules also used the interview to address another particularly persistent rumour about her marriage.
“There are some rumours that you guys were in an open relationship, the swinger rumour. Can you confirm or deny that you were in an open relationship, and is there any validity to that?” podcast host Adele Petropoulos asked.
Jules was unequivocal.
“It was definitely not an open relationship and definitely not swinging.
“If we were swinging, I wouldn’t have packed up my kids and left over a kiss. The swinging thing gets thrown around in cheating scandals all the time because it absolves any wrongdoing because people can say they’re not swinging. Absolutely not.”
Jules has since started rebuilding her life in Perth, recently revealing she had bought a new family home and even laser-removed the “L” tattoo dedicated to her ex from her wrist.
She had largely kept quiet about the details of the marriage breakdown after initially declaring she had been “betrayed in the most unimaginable way” and later shutting down suggestions the pair “were working through things”.
While having such a personal chapter of her life play out publicly was never the plan, Jules said there was some relief in people finally understanding why she had walked away.
“I actually felt a huge weight of relief off my shoulders because it actually felt good to have people know not exactly what had happened, but just the truth,” she said.
“I didn’t like how it sounded in the media that we were working through a marital issue and it sounded like we were having a fight and we were going to work through it and that was definitely not what was happening at all.”
Lachie has since moved on with Emma Field, confirming their romance with a kiss inside the Brisbane Lions dressing room following the club’s win over Collingwood at the MCG last month.
And while the off-field drama continues to generate headlines, Lachie and the Lions now have a rather significant on-field matter demanding their attention.
Brisbane will face the Sydney Swans in a qualifying final at the SCG on Saturday afternoon, with the Lions chasing history as they attempt to become just the third team this century to claim three consecutive AFL premierships.
