Remembering Maddy Cusack: A Family's Fight for Her Legacy

On a quiet bench in a village park, the fight to remember Maddy Cusack properly goes on.

The bench sits in Scargill Park in West Hallam, Derbyshire, where Maddy grew up. Her name is carved into it, flowers laid around it. This is where her sister Olivia and cousin Emily come when the noise of the inquest, the headlines and the unanswered questions become too much.

To them, she is not a case file or a club statement. She is their “sunshine”, the girl who lit up family gatherings and wound up the adults.

“She was the person I looked up to my whole life,” Olivia says. Emily laughs as she recalls how Maddy “used to get us in trouble with my dad. It was always her idea, then I’d take the blame for it.”

Those memories sit in sharp contrast to the clinical setting of a coroner’s court, where Maddy’s final months have been picked over and paused.

An inquest on hold

Maddy, a midfielder for Sheffield United, was 27 when she was found unconscious at her home in Derbyshire on 20 September 2023. The inquest into her death finally opened in June this year and was expected to conclude in July.

Instead, it stopped almost as abruptly as it began.

After a little under two weeks of hearings, the coroner adjourned proceedings. Sheffield United had been asked to locate documents linked to her medical records, and the process stalled. The wait has now stretched into months. The family has been told it will be at least December before the inquest resumes and more evidence is heard.

For Olivia, the delay is draining.

“It is very emotional and you can find yourself frustrated at times,” she tells BBC Newsbeat. “They’re very difficult days.” She calls the wait “extremely overwhelming”.

Inside court, evidence has focused on Maddy’s mental health struggles in the period before her death and her relationship with Sheffield United head coach Jonathan Morgan.

Maddy’s mother has already given evidence. 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 probed those issues, Olivia felt something vital slipping away.

‘More than the number on the back of her shirt’

Listening to the testimony, she realised the picture of her sister being painted in public did not match the one she carries with her to that bench in Scargill Park.

“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.”

So Olivia and Emily come back here, to the place where birthdays were planned and mischief was made. Both of their birthdays fall at the end of October. They used to talk about how they would always celebrate them together.

“Now I just come here,” Emily says quietly.

The inquest, by its nature, leans towards the darkest chapters of Maddy’s life. Her family are determined that the story told about her does not stop there.

Carrying her story forward

Since Maddy’s death, Olivia and other family members have thrown themselves into campaigning. They have set up a foundation in her name to support aspiring female footballers, a way to keep Maddy’s passion alive in the boots and dreams of others.

“The foundation keeps me going,” Olivia says. “It’s been a real lifeline to be able to continue her story.”

On Saturday, that determination took the form of a long, punishing walk. Olivia organised a near 30‑mile route from Bramall Lane, Sheffield United’s stadium, to near Derby, where Maddy lived.

The distance is symbolic: from the ground where she wore the red and white, to the place she called home.

“The aim with the walk is just to do her proud,” Olivia says. “Maddy would love that we were all challenging ourselves.”

Off the pitch, the scrutiny has been intense. An external report commissioned by Sheffield United shortly after her death cleared the club of wrongdoing. A separate Football Association report, ordered in early 2024, has been completed but will not be published until the inquest has finished.

So the family waits. For documents. For hearings. For conclusions that may or may not bring the clarity they crave.

What they refuse to wait for is permission to keep her memory alive.

“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.”

On that bench in West Hallam, with the autumn closing in and another birthday approaching without her, that effort continues.