Tess Crosley claims she felt ‘betrayal’ the Lachie Neale scandal was made public

Tess Crosley has spoken out for the first time about her involvement with AFL star Lachie Neale while he was still married to his now-estranged wife Jules.

Just hours after Jules addressed the alleged infidelity on the Pretty Sure podcast, Crosley emerged in a teaser for her own upcoming tell-all, sensationally claiming she felt “betrayal” that the alleged affair was ever made public at all.

In the teaser, Crosley addressed how Jules had shared a pointed comment underneath one of her Instagram photos with Lachie after the scandal erupted, which hinted she had something to do with their marriage breakdown.

“Take these down, you idiot. You’re embarrassing yourself,” Jules wrote, with a media storm of speculation erupting in its wake.

Crosley said she believed everyone involved had made a pact to keep the fallout behind closed doors.

“I thought we sort of made the unanimous decision not to make any comments publicly at all,” she said on Daily Mail Australia’s The Debrief podcast, which will be released in full on Thursday afternoon.

“Only a couple of months ago, I also learned that somebody from the parties was sending private information to the journalists.

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Jules Neale claims ex Lachie Neale’s alleged infidelity wasn’t the first time

“And that was really hard. I’d been staying silent out of respect. There’s so much more to this story that people don’t know, but I’m not going to bring others down just to make myself look better either.”

“It almost did feel like a betrayal,” she added, “hearing that people who wanted to keep things quiet weren’t keeping things quiet by doing things anonymously.”

Crosley married Ben Crosley, who is also close friends with Lachie, in 2017. Their current relationship status is unknown, but they do share a child together.

While Crosley’s interview will air on Thursday and perhaps shed more light on the relationship she had with Lachie, Jules had her say on Wednesday.

She alleged Lachie had been unfaithful in their marriage at least once before their December 2025 split, claiming he betrayed her trust in the time between the birth of their daughter in 2021 and arrival of their son in 2024.

While Jules ultimately called time on the marriage in December, she made it clear the cracks had started much earlier.

“It wasn’t the first time for us, which is awful,” she claimed in an interview on the Pretty Sure podcast with Adelle Petropoulos.

The mother-of-two explained while it would appear to many that she “packed up and left with the kids” when Lachie confirmed their separation in January 2026, that wasn’t the case.

Jules claimed that she found out Lachie had been unfaithful once before after receiving “one of those awful ‘hey girly’ DMs with receipts”.

“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’.”

“I guess I want people to know that if you haven’t been strong enough to leave the first time, that’s OK.”

Jules and Lachie’s relationship broke down after she publicly claimed she had been “betrayed” in light of rumours about the couple’s marriage.

Lachie added he had to “accept” the consequences of his actions, but was focused on rebuilding trust with Neale because of the well-being of their children.

During her Pretty Sure interview, Jules addressed their split, saying: “When I found out that this had happened, this recent thing had happened. It was immediately like, ‘We’re done, I’m done’. It was just immediately apparent that this was going to continue.”

“It wasn’t a one-off mistake and if could do something like this after that, it’ll keep happening for the rest of my life.”

Jules said that when she left the marriage she was under the impression the betrayal was an alleged kiss, but claims she later found out it was an “ongoing four-month affair with my best friend”.

In the eight months since the split, Jules has moved interstate to be with her parents and immediate family in Perth while Lachie remains in Brisbane.

The pair are co-parenting their two children Piper, four, and Freddie, one.

“I’m figuring this out as I go like the whole co-parenting separation thing,” she said.