Maddy Cusack\u2019s former manager Jonathan Morgan labelled her as \u201cgenerally a liar\u201d during a Football Association investigation into her death, an inquest has heard.<\/p>\n
Cusack died in Derbyshire on 20 September 2023 at the age of 27 and Chesterfield coroner\u2019s 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 \u201cpsycho\u201d and said he had been concerned about her wellbeing.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cbottom-heavy\u201d during a meeting with Cusack and the team\u2019s physio, but he told the court he been referring to the muscles in Cusack\u2019s legs while discussing a new strength-and-conditioning programme for her, not her weight.<\/p>\n
Separate to the ongoing inquest \u2013 which is scheduled to last until Friday \u2013 the FA has also conducted it\u2019s own investigation in the aftermath of Cusack\u2019s death, and while its findings have not been published, hundreds of pages of the FA\u2019s 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 \u201chard to be negative about someone who has died\u201d but that \u201cshe was generally a liar\u201d.<\/p>\n
Defending those comments, Morgan said \u201cthere\u2019s definitely evidence to show Maddy omitted information to her family about my support for her\u201d and said he had read \u201ca lot of one-sided information provided at that time\u201d in the media after Cusack\u2019s death. Morgan accepted that he had \u201cstruggled to manage\u201d Cusack during their time at Leicester City, when she left the club midway through the season. He said her departure was down to a \u201clack of playing time\u201d, adding: \u201cIt hadn\u2019t worked from a footballing point of view.\u201d Morgan told the court that, when arriving at Sheffield United in 2023, he had asked his assistant Luke Turner to \u201chelp me get the best out of her\u201d.<\/p>\n
During the course of a lengthy, tense and at times argumentative exchange between Morgan and the family\u2019s 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\u2019s physio, Francesca Carr, that Cusack had not been fit for selection, which concurred with Carr\u2019s comments to the court last Wednesday. Cusack\u2019s medical records are not available, having been lost during a switch to a different records-keeping system, according to Sheffield United\u2019s former club doctor, Subhashis Basu.<\/p>\n
Armstrong suggested to Morgan that he had been \u201ctrying to make a point\u201d by leaving Cusack out to illustrate \u201cI\u2019m the boss\u201d as he started his new job, but Morgan said: \u201cShe was injured when I first came in. I\u2019m not really sure that\u2019s me \u2018showing who is boss\u2019.\u201d Morgan told the court Cusack had suffered a setback in her recovery from an injury sustained in December 2022 due to \u201coverloading\u201d and he said she had swelling around the injury.<\/p>\n
Morgan also said that his desired playing style, which he said involved \u201chigh-pressing\u201d 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 \u201cvery good at the endurance side\u201d 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\u2019s manager in November 2022, but he added of Cusack: \u201cI saw her play very, very well towards the back end of the season [spring 2023] \u2013 by the end of the season, with work on it, she was a regular starter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morgan also said he had been concerned about Cusack\u2019s wellbeing in August 2023 when he had noticed her looking \u201cdishevelled\u201d, explaining: \u201c[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\u2019d just got out of bed and turned up. That wasn\u2019t the Maddy, from a presentation point of view, that any of us were used to.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cmissing Grace\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n
Morgan was also quizzed on claims that he had humiliated Cusack by called Riglar \u201cMrs Cusack\u201d in front of the team, which he said \u201cnever happened\u201d, but he did admit to saying, in front of only Cusack and Riglar, \u201chere are the girlfriends\u201d, which he said was \u201ca tongue-in-cheek comment\u201d and \u201ca bit of banter\u201d, adding: \u201cI know it was banter because their next banter [back] was about my weight and we preceded to laugh together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morgan\u2019s evidence session will resume on Tuesday morning when the inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maddy Cusack\u2019s former manager Jonathan Morgan labelled her as \u201cgenerally a liar\u201d during a Football Association investigation into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-677543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}