Remembering Maddy Cusack: A Fight for Justice
On a quiet bench in Derbyshire, the fight to remember Maddy Cusack properly goes on.
The bench sits in Scargill Park in West Hallam, the village where she grew up. Her name is etched into the wood; the memories sit with her family.
To her sister Olivia, Maddy was “the person I looked up to my whole life”. To her cousin Emily Reilly, she was the ringleader. “She used to get us in trouble with my dad,” Emily recalls, laughing at the thought. “It was always her idea then I'd take the blame for it.”
Three years after her death, those stories are what they cling to. But they are still waiting for answers.
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 began in June this year and was scheduled to conclude in July.
It did not. After just under two weeks of hearings, the coroner adjourned the inquest. It has been paused for months while Sheffield United searches for documents linked to her medical records.
The delay means the family must now wait until at least December to hear more evidence.
Olivia calls the wait “extremely overwhelming”.
“It is very emotional and you can find yourself frustrated at times,” she tells BBC Newsbeat. “They're very difficult days.”
This is not the first setback. Maddy’s inquest had already been delayed twice before July’s adjournment. Each postponement stretches the process, each new date another hurdle for a family trying to grieve.
The picture painted in court
Inside the coroner’s court, the focus has fallen on Maddy’s mental health and her time at Sheffield United.
Evidence, including testimony from her mother, described how she had struggled with her mental health in the months before her death and had experienced problems with Blades coach Jonathan Morgan.
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 relationships and wellbeing, Olivia sat and listened. What she heard, she says, didn’t sound like the sister she knew.
“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.”
That’s the tension at the heart of this inquest: a life reduced to case files, reports and matchdays, when her family remembers the mischief, the warmth, the ordinary chaos of growing up together.
Keeping her alive in stories
So they come back to the bench.
Olivia and Emily visit often, especially around this time of year. Both have birthdays at the end of October. They were supposed to spend them together.
“Now I just come here,” Emily says quietly.
The stories spill out. Childhood pranks. Arguments. The kind of small, unremarkable details that never make it into official documents but define a person far more than any statistic.
In a courtroom dominated by darker chapters of Maddy’s life, this lighter side – the one that made her “our sunshine”, as they call her – feels lost. Her family are determined to drag it back into the light.
Olivia has thrown herself into that mission. Along with other relatives, she has campaigned relentlessly since her sister’s death, setting up a foundation in Maddy’s name to support aspiring female footballers.
“The foundation keeps me going,” she says. “It's been a real lifeline to be able to continue her story.”
On Saturday, she organised a walk from Bramall Lane, Sheffield United’s ground, to near Derby, where Maddy 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.”
Waiting for the full picture
After Maddy’s death, Sheffield United commissioned an external report. It cleared the club of wrongdoing.
The Football Association ordered its own investigation in early 2024. That report is finished but will not be published until the inquest concludes. Another piece of the puzzle, locked away until the legal process runs its course.
For the family, that means more waiting. More days like this one in Scargill Park. More effort to keep her name from slipping into the background while the system grinds on.
“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, eventually, deliver its findings. Reports will be released, conclusions written, responsibilities weighed.
For those on that bench, the real verdict is already set: Maddy Cusack was never just a squad number or a name on a team sheet. The question now is whether the game – and the institutions around it – will remember her that way too.
