Two tell-all podcasts, but one big question remains in the Lachie Neale cheating saga

It’s been an extraordinary week in the Lachie Neale cheating saga, a scandal which has dominated headlines for months.

Two tell-all podcasts. One from the wife who felt betrayed, the other from the woman he allegedly cheated with. It’s an unprecedented move that has rarely, if ever, played out in full public view.

But despite hour-long episodes from both parties, there’s still one question that neither really answered – just how this alleged affair materialised in the first place.

What we learned from Jules’ podcast

Jules’ podcast came first on Wednesday, one that had been “months in the making” after radio silence on social media regarding what had happened.

To recap the origin of the couple’s demise, Jules and Lachie’s seven-year marriage ended in December 2025 after she publicly stated she had been “betrayed in the most unimaginable way”.

Lachie confirmed the separation in January 2026, stepping down as co-captain of the Brisbane Lions and issuing a public apology for letting his family down.

Tess, who is married to Lachie’s friend Ben Crosley, was a close friend of Jules. Following the split, Jules posted a pointed comment on one of Tess’s Instagram photos which showed the two couples together at the AFL Grand Final, telling her to “Take these down, you idiot. You’re embarrassing yourself”.

The rumours of infidelity between Lachie and Tess escalated from there.

Jules told her side of the story to Adelle Petropoulos on the Pretty Sure podcast, claiming she discovered the alleged affair from a close friend at the footy club who had been contacted by another club partner.

Jules’ friend was told: “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,” Jules explained. Jules said she was initially told it was just a kiss, but she still packed up the couple’s two young children and headed to her hometown Perth. It was when she arrived in WA that she discovered it was instead, allegedly, a four-month fling.

“I guess it was an ongoing, four-month affair with my best friend, behind my back,” she said. “I was told it was a kiss and that’s all it was.” Tess later claimed in her own podcast that the pair had only been friends for a year.

She also claimed that this “wasn’t the first time” the couple had faced infidelity, claiming Lachie had been unfaithful once before between the birth of their daughter in 2021 and arrival of their son in 2024.

“The worst, the worst day of my life. I didn’t leave bed for four days,” she said.

“We already had my daughter together, so I decided to stay and try to work on it. I just felt like after that I was like, ’People can make mistakes and if it was a one-off mistake... I don’t want to break up our family because of it.”

The podcast didn’t go into detail on what she was told about the alleged affair or how she confronted either party about what happened.

She did, however, reveal that she’s aware that Lachie has since moved on with his new partner, Emma Field.

“A heads up would have been nice. I found out in the media like everyone else did,” she said, confirming she’d never met Emma or heard of her before.

Jules said the one piece of advice she’d have for anyone else?

“Have your own bank account, and save some runaway money no matter what.”

What we learned from Tess’ podcast

Tess chose to release her side of the story on Daily Mail Australia’s The Debrief Podcast with Savanna Young, which launched on Thursday.

Yes, social media sleuths questioned the curious timing of both podcasts being released the same week. However, the publisher insists the timing was pure coincidence, dismissing claims of a coordinated rebuttal as “demonstrably false.”

At any rate, listeners waited with bated breath to hear how an affair with a best friend’s husband could even begin – though she ultimately kept her account brief and restrained.

She took accountability for the affair, but didn’t address exactly what happened.

“I definitely made some decisions I deeply regret,” Tess said. “I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to talk about other people’s personal lives, I can only talk about my accountability and my personal life because I feel like that’s not fair to have their private life spoken about.

“In saying that, there’s accountability I can take, but there’s always context on how I got there. I think the hardest part is not being able to share that context because it really does help people understand how I got to a place where I made some decisions I deeply regret.”

Tess pointed to underlying issues in her ten-year marriage to her husband Ben Crosley, but refused to divulge what went on behind closed doors out of respect for his privacy. The couple were both raised in the Mormon church; she began dating him when she was 18, they married when they were 21 and had their son, Beau, in 2023.

Without naming Lachie directly, she framed their relationship as something that simply spiralled out of control.

“It was just sort of like a friend that got way too close,” she claimed, before adding trailing, cryptic thoughts on the dynamic: “I think I experienced love bombing, which I think definitely ... your brain chemicals...”

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‘Accountability I can take, but’: Tess Crosley speaks on Lachie Neale scandal, gives shock update on her own marriage

Tess claimed she felt her own version of “betrayal” when the news went public, claiming involved parties had agreed to keep it things private.

In the wake of the scandal, Crosley revealed she was bombarded with thousands of daily messages, targeted with multiple death threats, and verbally harassed in the street by strangers.

Tess emphasised that while she made poor choices, she firmly believes she is “not a bad person” and shouldn’t be defined solely by those mistakes

She also reflected on her strict Mormon upbringing, Crosley admitted she only recently began breaking away from her sheltered past.

“It was only in the last few years that I sort of just started to live life a little bit and see what life was like outside of that Mormon world and culture,” she said.

Again, no huge details about the alleged affair were aired. She did, however, reveal that her husband Ben had been “incredible” during the hard times.

“We had a great marriage, but… certain things have happened in the past that I won’t go into detail about. I think we’ve both have come to a place where we’ve both made mistakes and both of us aren’t perfect, and we see it like that,” she said. 

“We’re not together, like in a relationship kind of way, but we’ll just see what happens. We’re both healing in different ways.”

What we still don’t know

Jules has understandably focused on what the betrayal meant for her and the devastating process of discovering the person she trusted had misled her.

Tess, meanwhile, took accountability for her actions and spoke about the aftermath, yet provided little information about how the alleged affair materialised or exactly what happened between the two.

In fact, neither podcast featured a single mention of his name.

Apart from his speech where he revealed he let his family down, Lachie has yet to say anything at all on the scandal – and perhaps he never will.

He is, after all, loved-up and in a new relationship with Emma Field, with the pair seen kissing at a recent AFL match without a care in the world.

For now, both women have had their say, the followers have drawn their conclusions, and the full story remains locked behind closed doors.