AFL refuses to be drawn into legal battle with estranged wife Cate
Updated ,first published
The AFL has refused to buy into the bitter legal dispute between the former Carlton chairman and PwC boss Luke Sayers and his estranged wife Cate, despite threats that the league would be dragged into the affair.
The league’s announcement regarding this tag on Thursday comes a few days later News Corp reports Cate Sayers will subpoena correspondence An incident took place between AFL senior figures and members of Luke Sayers’ camp in January last year during the league investigation into the posting of a sexually explicit image on the former Blues chairman’s X account.
Cate Sayers has taken legal action against her estranged husband in the Supreme Court of Victoria, suing the high-profile businessman for defamation and breach of trust.
In her account of the incident given to the AFL’s integrity unit during the investigation, she claimed her husband had slandered her and breached her trust by revealing information about her private life, including her sexual history and medical information.
The league’s investigation found that Sayers’ account had been “compromised” and that he was not responsible for posting the image. He was found not to have breached AFL rules, but within two weeks he resigned as Carlton chairman.
“During January 2025, the AFL investigated the matter to understand whether Mr Sayers, as a registered official as the then Carlton chairman, had breached AFL rules,” AFL spokesman Jay Allen said in a statement on Thursday.
“The AFL’s jurisdiction is limited to registered officials and possible breaches of any AFL rules.
“The AFL stands by its process on this matter.
“Mr Sayers is no longer a registered AFL official. This matter between Mr and Mrs Sayers is currently before the courts.”
AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon recently defended the integrity of new corporate communications boss Sharon McCrohan, who advised Luke Sayers during the indecent images scandal.
The well-connected McCrohan served as Luke Sayers’ spin doctor last year while he was being investigated by the AFL integrity unit after an explicit penis image appeared in a post on his account X tagging an executive from health insurance giant Bupa.
“Whatever Luke and Cate are going through, they’re going through it. There’s a court process going on. But I’ll definitely be on the side of the integrity inquiry,” Dillon added in a radio interview.
Post X was removed about 15 minutes later, and Sayers claimed she had been hacked. He later said that the photo was taken for medical purposes.
The AFL cleared Sayers and closed the investigation after he made a legal representation to the league.
Lawyers for the former Carlton chairman and his estranged wife have traded legal blows in a series of filings in recent weeks ahead of a blockbuster trial in November.
In her statement of claim, Cate Sayers alleged that she had been defamed by her estranged husband’s legal declaration because it amounted to: “Cate suffers from mental illness and is regularly prescribed medication by her doctors which she refuses to take, such that Mr Sayers’ denials regarding the publication of the suggestive photo on account X cannot be relied upon”.
“The information was used to present him as unstable, unreliable, unstable, mentally disturbed, and/or a living risk to his own safety,” the statement of claim alleged.
In his defense to the court, Luke Sayers accused his estranged wife of taking documents from his mobile phone. He claimed that after the photo was published on the X account, he said the following words to him: “Let’s see how you can get out of this.”
“Luke truly and reasonably believed at all relevant times that there were grounds to suspect that Cate had published the medical photograph via post X without Luke’s knowledge or consent; and that Cate’s lies about publishing the medical photograph cannot be relied upon,” his lawyers said.
In the latest salvo, Cate Sayers’ lawyers last week said that Cate Sayers was not “near her or her phone at the time X post was posted” and that Luke Sayers did not provide the photo in question to a medical doctor or seek medical advice about it.
“Further information will be provided following discovery, interrogations and subpoenas to relevant parties,” his lawyers added, setting the stage for the legal battle to include senior AFL figures involved in the league’s investigation into the saga last year.
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Jake Niall is a Walkley-winning sports journalist and The Age’s chief AFL writer.Connect with: X or email.
