Remembering Maddy Cusack: A Legacy Beyond Football
On a quiet bench in Scargill Park, the fight to remember Maddy Cusack properly goes on.
The plaque carries her name. The stories carry everything else.
To her sister Olivia, Maddy was “the person I looked up to my whole life”. To her cousin Emily Reilly, she was the ringleader, “the one who used to get us in trouble with my dad”. To Sheffield United fans, she was a committed midfielder and the first woman to reach 100 appearances for the club.
Three years after her death, those worlds still don’t quite meet. And her family are still waiting for answers.
A family stuck in limbo
Cusack was 27 when she was found unconscious at her home in Derbyshire on 20 September 2023. An inquest into her death opened in June this year and was expected to conclude in July.
It didn’t.
After just under two weeks of hearings, the coroner adjourned proceedings. Sheffield United were told to locate documents linked to her medical records. Months later, the inquest remains paused, and the earliest the family expect to hear more evidence is December.
The delay has taken its toll.
“It is very emotional and you can find yourself frustrated at times,” Olivia tells BBC Newsbeat. The wait, she says, is “extremely overwhelming”. These are “very difficult days”.
The inquest had already been postponed twice before it even began. Each new date brings hope, then another stretch of limbo.
The player under the microscope
Inside the courtroom, Maddy’s life has been pulled apart and examined in detail.
Evidence has covered her mental health struggles in the period before her death and her relationship with Sheffield United head coach Jonathan Morgan. Her mother has given emotional testimony. Messages and interactions have been scrutinised.
Morgan told the inquest he had “no concerns” about their relationship and insisted “things have not been portrayed factually or correctly with how she was feeling”.
While lawyers and witnesses dissected her final months, Olivia felt something vital was missing.
“It dawned on me that when people were asked questions about Maddy and to share what she was like as a person, they were all very similar answers and quite focused on the football side of her,” she says.
“People don’t seem to know her like we did – of course they don’t. But I wanted to introduce a different side of Maddy.
“I wanted them to know more than the number on the back of her shirt or the colours that she wore on the football pitch.”
In a process dominated by medical notes, workplace relationships and timelines, the laughter and mischief of the girl from West Hallam rarely makes it into the record.
‘Our sunshine’ at Scargill Park
That’s why Olivia and Emily keep coming back to this bench in Scargill Park, in the Derbyshire village where they all grew up. It’s where their Maddy still feels real.
With both of their birthdays at the end of October, the cousins had always planned to celebrate together. Now, Emily marks hers here instead.
“Now I just come here,” she says quietly.
Then the smile returns, because the memories demand it.
“She used to get us in trouble with my dad when we were younger,” Emily laughs. “It was always her idea then I’d take the blame for it.”
This is the version of Maddy her family fear is being lost: the one who lit up rooms, who pushed boundaries, who made ordinary days feel like events. Not just the professional footballer whose name appears in official reports.
To them, she was their sunshine. Not a case file.
Keeping her story alive
The grief has never really eased, but Olivia has refused to stand still. She has turned her energy outwards, campaigning in her sister’s name and trying to build something that reflects who Maddy was and what she loved.
She helped set up a foundation in Maddy’s honour to support aspiring female footballers, giving opportunities to young girls who dream of following the same path.
“The foundation keeps me going,” she says. “It’s been a real lifeline to be able to continue her story.”
On Saturday, that story took to the road. Olivia organised a walk from Bramall Lane – Sheffield United’s ground, where Maddy made her name – to near Derby, where she lived. Almost 30 miles on foot.
“The aim with the walk is just to do her proud,” Olivia says. “Maddy would love that we were all challenging ourselves.”
The route linked the two places that defined Maddy’s professional and personal life. Friends, family and supporters walked it for her, and with her, in spirit.
Official reports, unanswered questions
Soon after Maddy’s death, Sheffield United commissioned an external report into the circumstances around it. That investigation cleared the club of wrongdoing.
A second report, ordered by the Football Association in early 2024, has already been completed but will not be published until the inquest finishes. Another document, another delay.
For the family, the legal and regulatory process feels endless. Every new step seems to depend on another.
So they cling to the one thing they can control: how often her name is heard.
“She will only ever remain a part of this life if we keep saying her name and keep remembering her,” Olivia says.
“And as painful as that can be on days where you want to forget and you just want to stay in bed all day and not face the world, I try and make a conscious effort to keep saying her name and keep her living alongside us ultimately.”
The inquest will resume. Reports will be released. Conclusions will be written.
Until then, on a bench in a small Derbyshire park, Maddy Cusack is not a headline or a statistic. She is a sister, a cousin, a troublemaker, a footballer, a legacy still being written – one step, one walk, one spoken name at a time.
