Possibly lead away from front and elsewhere (4)

I haven't cracked this one yet — but the brilliant team at Fifteensquared have:

m ETAL (possibly lead) – missing the initial letter or ‘away from the front’. This had us foxed as we both read it as LEAD (as in at the front) but we think it just about works in the way that we eventually parsed it. Thanks to those who noticed that ‘and’ was not underlined.