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Maddy Cusack’s former manager Jonathan Morgan labelled her as “generally a liar” during a Football Association investigation into her death, an inquest has heard.
Cusack died in Derbyshire on 20 September 2023 at the age of 27 and Chesterfield coroner’s court heard evidence last week from her parents, who feel Morgan was integral to her mental health deteriorating. Giving evidence to the court on Monday, Morgan denied ever shouting at Cusack, or calling her a “psycho” and said he had been concerned about her wellbeing.
Morgan, who took charge at Sheffield United in February 2023 and had previously coached the player at Leicester City in 2018, admitted to calling Cusack “bottom-heavy” during a meeting with Cusack and the team’s physio, but he told the court he been referring to the muscles in Cusack’s legs while discussing a new strength-and-conditioning programme for her, not her weight.
Separate to the ongoing inquest – which is scheduled to last until Friday – the FA has also conducted it’s own investigation in the aftermath of Cusack’s death, and while its findings have not been published, hundreds of pages of the FA’s evidence have been made available to the coroner. As part of that FA investigation, Morgan was interviewed by the FA on 9 May 2024 and was asked on Monday about a specific part of the transcript where he has said it was “hard to be negative about someone who has died” but that “she was generally a liar”.
Defending those comments, Morgan said “there’s definitely evidence to show Maddy omitted information to her family about my support for her” and said he had read “a lot of one-sided information provided at that time” in the media after Cusack’s death. Morgan accepted that he had “struggled to manage” Cusack during their time at Leicester City, when she left the club midway through the season. He said her departure was down to a “lack of playing time”, adding: “It hadn’t worked from a footballing point of view.” Morgan told the court that, when arriving at Sheffield United in 2023, he had asked his assistant Luke Turner to “help me get the best out of her”.
During the course of a lengthy, tense and at times argumentative exchange between Morgan and the family’s legal representative, Dean Armstrong KC, Morgan was extensively probed around his reasons for omitting Cusack from his starting lineup for his first match in charge of Sheffield United. He stressed that he had received medical advise from the team’s physio, Francesca Carr, that Cusack had not been fit for selection, which concurred with Carr’s comments to the court last Wednesday. Cusack’s medical records are not available, having been lost during a switch to a different records-keeping system, according to Sheffield United’s former club doctor, Subhashis Basu.
Armstrong suggested to Morgan that he had been “trying to make a point” by leaving Cusack out to illustrate “I’m the boss” as he started his new job, but Morgan said: “She was injured when I first came in. I’m not really sure that’s me ‘showing who is boss’.” Morgan told the court Cusack had suffered a setback in her recovery from an injury sustained in December 2022 due to “overloading” and he said she had swelling around the injury.
Morgan also said that his desired playing style, which he said involved “high-pressing” and therefore lots of high-speed running, accelerations and decelerations, was better-suited to others in his squad when he first took over, saying that Cusack was “very good at the endurance side” but initially not as well-suited to intense, shorter sprints. Morgan believed Cusack would have felt at home under the playing style of his predecessor, Neil Redfearn, who had stepped down as Sheffield United women’s manager in November 2022, but he added of Cusack: “I saw her play very, very well towards the back end of the season [spring 2023] – by the end of the season, with work on it, she was a regular starter.”
Morgan also said he had been concerned about Cusack’s wellbeing in August 2023 when he had noticed her looking “dishevelled”, explaining: “[Normally] Maddy, when she came to training, prided herself on her kit looking quite well washed, quite well presented [but] it got to the point where I thought she’d just got out of bed and turned up. That wasn’t the Maddy, from a presentation point of view, that any of us were used to.”
He said he had spoken to Cusack to ask how she was and her main concerns were that she did not feel her house had been a good investment. He also said feedback he was getting from his captain and assistant manager at the time was that Cusack was “missing Grace”, her girlfriend Grace Riglar, who had left Sheffield United and joined Lewes FC in the summer of 2023, meaning they were in a long-distance relationship.
Morgan was also quizzed on claims that he had humiliated Cusack by called Riglar “Mrs Cusack” in front of the team, which he said “never happened”, but he did admit to saying, in front of only Cusack and Riglar, “here are the girlfriends”, which he said was “a tongue-in-cheek comment” and “a bit of banter”, adding: “I know it was banter because their next banter [back] was about my weight and we preceded to laugh together.”
Morgan’s evidence session will resume on Tuesday morning when the inquest continues.
