Neale was rubbed out of Saturday's Grand Final against Fremantle for a medium impact, intentional strike on Hawthorn's Jack Ginnivan.
The AFL Appeals Board is chaired by Murray Kellam KC and have three panel members, all of whom played VFL or AFL football during the 1980s and 1990s.
The Lions can challenge the Tribunal decision on only four different grounds, only one of which the club likely has any chance of getting the desired outcome.
An appeal was always likely given the stakes of the case, with Neale a key cog of the Brisbane midfield engine and a man who was pivotal to the second half of Brisbane's Grand Final win over Geelong last year.
Whether the Lions genuinely believe they have a case to make to the Appeals Board, or are simply having a throw at the stumps hoping for a success, remains to be seen.
The fact they challenged the Match Review Panel suspension on three different grounds suggests the club was hoping they could find one legal point that landed.
The four grounds of appeal
1) Error of Law: "An error of law made during the hearing that had a material impact on the final decision."
The Lions would need to argue that the Tribunal had at some point unlawfully or incorrectly dismissed or passed a crucial point of evidence offered by the defence or the prosecution, which seems unlikely, though we are no legal experts here!
2) Unreasonable Decision: "The decision was so unreasonable that no tribunal acting reasonably could have reached it based on the evidence."
This could be a potential avenue of appeal for Brisbane, who argued on Tuesday that the albeit grainy footage confirmed that Neale's act was not what is commonly described as a 'gut punch', but was more akin to a body check.
Neale said on Tuesday night during evidence gathering that Ginnivan confirmed to him on the phone that it felt more like a check than a punch, with both the defence and the prosecution going into argument on Tuesday about whether the act should have been classified as a strike. Tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson concluded that it was "a forceful" and intentional "swing of the arm".
3) Manifestly Excessive Classification: "The classification given to the offence (e.g. impact or conduct grading) was clearly too high or too low."
The Lions will almost certainly again attempt to make an argument that Neale's hit on Ginnivan was low impact and not medium impact, though it does appear to be in line with similar incidents throughout 2026 that were graded as medium impact.
Neale argued on Tuesday night that his arm had wrapped around Ginnivan's body in the act of a shoulder check, even suggesting the Hawk "might have taken a bit of a dive to get a free kick".
"My shoulder made contact with his body and shoulder first and my arm wrapped around Jack," Neale said.
"But I didn't feel like I was striking him at all. It was more a bump or body-check."
Neale's testimony was described by the Tribunal in their reasoning as "inconsistent in key respects with what we saw on the video (footage)".
4) Manifestly Excessive Sanction: "The final suspension or penalty imposed was clearly too severe."
This is where Brisbane could again use Tuesday night's argument that Neale's 320-game clean record should have been taken into account when issuing the brutal sanction of missing a Grand Final.
Gleeson acknowledged Neale's record at the conclusion of the hearing on Tuesday, describing him as "not a unicorn but very close", but ultimately concluded that it did not warrant an "exceptional circumstance" that deserved a downgrade in sanction.
With a one-game ban now the standard for intentional medium impact strikes, they would not be able to argue that a one-week suspension is manifestly excessive, but rather that the exclusion from a Grand Final is a much harsher sanction.