It was the day Maddy Cusack’s parents came face-to-face with the manager they blame for their daughter taking her own life.A two-week inquest into the death of the former Sheffield United player began at Chesterfield coroner’s court on Monday and was attended by the Cusack family and Jonathan Morgan, her former coach.In a series of exchanges, Morgan repeatedly clashed with Cusack’s father, David, about the reasons why the former England youth international “lost her bounce” and became suicidal after his appointment as manager. Cusack died in September 2023 at the age of 27, and her death is the subject of an FA inquiry.Morgan was responding to David Cusack’s testimony that her mental health had spiralled because of the way the manager “made life so unpleasant for her”.Cusack’s father had previously told the inquest about the tragic scenes when he discovered her body at home in Derbyshire – “she looked so angelic” – and went on to call for Morgan to not be allowed to work in football again.“My principal aim was to make sure that what happened to Maddy never happened to anyone else,” David said, when asked why he had lodged an official complaint with the club and, later, the Football Association. “That involves putting him out of the picture so he couldn’t work and couldn’t behave like that again. Because he’d just have got another job.”He added: “I wanted him to be held responsible. Other people have put in grievances with the same MO (modus operandi).”Morgan denies any wrongdoing and says he had a normal manager-player relationship with Cusack.The former manager told the hearing on Monday he was going to represent himself rather than using legal representatives, before subjecting Cusack’s father to prolonged questioning.Cusack Sr. denied that he had misrepresented the relationship between manager and player by not taking into account other details, such as Morgan making her lunch and appointing her as one of three vice-captains.His grievance with Morgan, he explained, was “reinforced by what Maddy told us at the time, and what other players subsequently told us — there’s a huge number of those people. They rang us (after Maddy’s death) and said, ‘I bet that’s what happened, can we give you our experience?’ There was no coercion, no trawling for witnesses, none of that.”Morgan managed Cusack when she played at Leicester City and Sheffield United (Barrington Coombs – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)It transpired that Morgan – sacked by Sheffield United in February 2024 after details emerged of an “inappropriate and immoral” relationship with a teenage player while manager of Leicester City — had told the FA’s investigators that Maddy was a “general liar”.“I was appalled,” her father responded to that allegation. “That’s the only defence available (to him), even though it’s not true. Maddy would say it how it was — she wasn’t a liar at all.”Morgan went on to cross-examine Cusack’s father about the allegations that he, as Sheffield United’s manager, held a “personal antipathy” towards the player from their previous spell together at Leicester.Cusack, a former England Under-19 international, previously had spells with Aston Villa, Birmingham City and Leicester City, having come through the junior set-ups at Chesterfield and Nottingham Forest.Her mother, Deborah, and three siblings — Richard, Felicia and Olivia — were in court for the first day of an inquest that will involve testimony from a number of players and club employees. Morgan is scheduled to give evidence on Thursday.Her father told the inquest Cusack’s issues with Morgan had originated at Leicester, explaining that Morgan’s family ran the club at the time and funded her £500-a-month contract. Morgan, he alleged, had deliberately turned against her after it became clear Leicester were not going to win promotion to the Women’s Super League.“I believe the (Morgan) family decided they wanted to offload players,” said David, a Derby-based solicitor. “You offload players in a variety of ways. You either pay up their contracts, which is expensive. Or you make life so unpleasant for them, they leave. Life had been made so unpleasant for her she wanted to leave.”In later testimony, he added: “She left because she’d never come across a character like that before. The way he dealt with people, his man-management … when you’re in, you’re in; when you’re out, you’re out; my way or the highway.”Cusack moved to Sheffield United and, in her father’s words, was the “happiest she’d ever been” at Christmas 2022. Then, early in the new year, she sent her mother a text message reading: “Guess who’s going to be our new gaffer, haha.”Morgan was appointed at Bramall Lane in February 2023. “I don’t think she could believe it could come off,” her father told the inquest. “We had taken the view that he was in our rear-view mirrors and we would never have to deal with him again.”He went on to reference an occasion when Morgan allegedly referred to Cusack as a “psycho” during a game for Sheffield United at Leicester. Morgan, then Leicester’s manager, has denied this.“We knew there was personal antipathy (on Morgan’s part) but we didn’t care because he was no longer in her life,” said Cusack Sr. “We knew with his involvement (at Sheffield): ‘Can leopards really change their spots?’”When Cusack was left out of the team for Morgan’s first game, her father recalled that “she took it as ‘here we go again’ … Madeleine feared history was repeating itself.” Over the following months, she became “demotivated, a bit deflated” and “lost her bounce, she was anxious, worried … she’d lost her joie de vivre.”She did not dare report Morgan to the club, her father stated, because she had concluded that “nobody will side with me against him — he’s the manager. She thought her position would become untenable, because he would deny it and the club would have to make a decision.”Her issues were compounded by worries about being “strung along” over a new contract and balancing her career with working at the club as a marketing executive, earning a total of £18,000 a year, her father said. Grace Riglar, her partner and team-mate, was “forced out of the club”, Maddy’s father added, stating that his daughter’s problems “all came back to the relationship she had with Mr Morgan.”Stephen Bettis, the club’s chief executive, was present at the inquest as the player’s father pointed out that a number of other complaints had been made about Morgan’s behaviour. “They (United) backed the wrong horse,” Cusack Sr. said of the club’s position. “The club had the opportunity to deal with this. There were several other grievances.”Morgan has said previously that the other complainants were from players who were out of the team and had a grudge or issue with him.In Cusack’s case, she sought medical help with her family’s knowledge and was placed on medication, but she did not want the club to find out, her father explained, because she felt she would be stigmatised. “The club didn’t provide any support,” he added. “She was dealing with a personality (Morgan) who she felt was not a supporter.”In later exchanges, Morgan asked the player’s father if he was aware Cusack had an injury issue and, as such, she was left out of the team for her best interests. “I don’t think you’ve ever acted in Maddy’s best interests,” was the reply.“No further questions,” Morgan concluded.