Lachie Neale will not decide for at least three months which club he’ll play for in 2027 as he becomes the 112th player to reach the 300-game milestone on Sunday against Melbourne at the MCG.
The champion midfielder started his season in familiar style after a tumultuous off-season led to the break-up of his marriage and his wife Jules and their two children Piper, 4, and Freddie, 1, moving back to Perth. He also stood down as Lions co-captain.
“[It’s] obviously tough not having the kids here, but I’m pretty lucky that Jules, their mother, allows me to come and go from Perth,” Neale said.
“I get Piper over here a fair bit … I am very fortunate that Jules has been very flexible with that, and I am able to go back to Perth with the club’s blessing whenever I want. If I have to miss a day of training or whatever they are happy for that to happen. I am managing that pretty well so far. It is only early in the year, but the footy season will just fly by, and it will be the off-season again.”
That’s about when the decision on his future will be made (he is an unrestricted free agent) but, for now, he can focus enough on football to remain a key player in the Lions’ tilt for a third consecutive flag.
“I honestly haven’t thought [about] what I will do next year – that will come in 12 weeks,” Neale said.
“At the moment, I am just trying to make it work here in Brisbane and, for me, if it works well and everyone is happy – and the kids are the No.1 priority – and we think we can make it work playing here, I would love to stay, but we will wait and see how it plays out.”
What is certain is that the dual Brownlow medallist and two-time premiership player heads into game 300 as one of the most dynamic, elite midfielders in the game.
He earned 10 coaches’ votes last week in the Lions’ win over North Melbourne in the Barossa Valley – his ability to slide in and out of congestion with clean hands and slick handballs or crafty kicks is matched by few in today’s game.
His mind and hands work at warp speed, and he could find a football at the bottom of a muddy dam.
His style and impact is reminiscent of those who excelled in those all-but unteachable skills in the generations before him, such as Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell and three-club player Greg Williams.
After growing up playing whole seasons dressed as his favourite Port Adelaide players inside the family home in the tiny South Australian town of Kybybolite – 340 kilometres south-east of Adelaide – and scouting around packs during breaks at Naracoorte High, Neale soon realised his strengths would be clean hands and quick releases. So, he worked on his craft with diligence.
“I feel under-prepared if I don’t do thousands of touches during the week,” he said, obviously a disciple of the “10,000 hours” dictum.
He varies his routine but always comes back to drills that can make his training routines harder than games.
That often means grabbing ground balls and handballs one-handed.
“Clearly I am not going to take them all cleanly, but I think that is a key ingredient as to how you get better … through stuffing it up as well, so I get [Lions assistant] Cam Bruce to pepper hundreds of balls at me after training and I have to take them left and right [handed],” Neale said.
“Or I will throw them up and take one-handers like it is a ruck contest and ground balls as well. I will come in pretty hot and take left and right ground balls and fumble a heap of them. I have so much confidence that if I get two hands to the footy, I am not going to fumble.”
Neale’s obsession with being the best in the game is something he can’t explain, but it has propelled him to those two flags and two Brownlow Medals, as well as six best and fairests and four All-Australian guernseys. He is the only player in history to poll at least 25 Brownlow votes in four seasons.
“I know I am in it and doing the work and the games and what not, but when people read out what I have achieved in the game, it feels like it is someone else’s career that you are listening to. Hearing it gives me goosebumps a little bit,” Neale said.
He admits his relentless work ethic is something he has had to manage and says finding a balance remains a work in progress. He has been more concerned with ensuring he has evolved his leadership skills as well; consequently, he doesn’t expect others to prepare in the same obsessive and disciplined way he does.
Often Neale would walk into Chris Fagan’s office frustrated at the perceived lack of work a teammate was doing only to be counselled that there was more than one way to skin a cat (or, more aptly, raise a Lion).
“He [Fagan] was great at explaining that not everyone is going to have that same mindset as you, and you have to find other ways to get inside their head to help them and make them improve. That is something I have got better at – everyone has different motivating factors that make them tick,” Neale explained.
“I have had to shift my mindset a little bit and change the way I lead by accepting that as part of the game, and realise there is stuff that people do at the club better than me, and they don’t get into me about it, so you have to pick your poison.”
Clearly being wired slightly differently to most has helped him succeed. Neale’s effort to overcome a calf injury and still play a critical role in last year’s grand final – when he came on in the second half after starting as the sub – is part of football folklore, his third-quarter goal the moment that broke Geelong.
But Neale revealed for the first time during this interview that he also spent a night in hospital in the week before the 2024 grand final win over Sydney after the foot injury he had battled throughout the back half of the year suddenly flared up.
“I don’t think anyone knows this, but I actually spent the night in hospital – I thought my foot might have been infected,” he said.
“It was all swollen and bruised up, so I was a little bit worried that I wasn’t going to play in that grand final, but the doctors and physios got me sorted.”
He said he could not walk to the toilet whenever he woke during the night, such was the excruciating pain in his foot.
But he overcame that pain to finish second to teammate Will Ashcroft in the Norm Smith Medal voting, putting behind the disappointment of the previous year’s grand final loss to Collingwood. He describes that match as the worst performance of his (now) 164 matches with the Lions.
He returned to Brisbane after that loss wondering if he would have a chance to redeem himself on the big stage, and determined he would not waste another opportunity, having played as a sub with Fremantle in the Dockers’ 2013 grand final loss.
“Mentally, I thought if we get back to finals again I will never play that badly,” Neale said.
He didn’t: he won the Gary Ayres Medal for the best player in the 2024 finals series, was voted best on ground in the preliminary final, and shared the honours with Ashcroft in the grand final.
Fighting through injury to claim two premierships has shone a light on his toughness, but Neale has always been a warrior when it comes to playing through injury. He refuses to yield to predictions on how long an injury will sideline him, and sometimes the medical staff have to save him from himself.
“I always just think I can get up and play the next game. It is just how my mind works,” Neale said.
“I reckon, for me, when I look back on my career, it’s what I am almost most proud of – my ability to work through injuries, and play with pretty significant injuries and still rock up and perform.”
‘I don’t think anyone knows this, but I actually spent the night in hospital … I was a little bit worried that I wasn’t going to play in that grand final.’
Lachie Neale on grand final week of 2024
And perform he does – as a key cog in one of the most devastating midfield combinations the game has seen.
He developed such resilience through the tough love his Fremantle coach Ross Lyon expended on him, with the pair still close enough to catch up several times a year. His regard for Lyon, as a coach and person, is as high as it is for Fagan who, he says, is the best man manager he has seen in football.
Neale watched on with bemusement when Fagan and Lyon engaged in a war of words over player contracts in the pre-season. “I love them both, so I am like, ‘Settle down, you two – give it a rest’,” Neale joked.
It’s less than four months since he stepped down as co-captain and resolved to work in private to make the best of a sad personal situation, with both Neale and Jules appearing to be moving forward with purpose.
On Sunday, their daughter Piper will be at the MCG with family and friends to watch him reach his milestone, while Freddie remains with Mum.
Neale still has more milestones to achieve: namely to win as many premierships as possible in what’s left of his career.
Whether that is with the Brisbane Lions, or in Perth with either Fremantle or West Coast, remains to be seen.
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