She speaks from the heart, as a close friend of Maddy Cusack, and starts to explain why she has taken the life-changing decision to walk away from her professional career.
“The game, as a whole, seems reluctant to change or accept criticism,” Nina Wilson tells The Athletic. “But if a player’s death is not a wake-up call for the entire game, I don’t know what is. Maddy would still be here if it wasn’t for football and the lack of support systems and, unless these issues are addressed properly, this will happen again.”
Wilson, 25, was a team-mate of Cusack’s at Sheffield United and, like her friend, there was a time when she was immensely proud to represent the club. “I feel like I was born to play football,” she says. “It has always been my passion. I played for the love of the game and I have always been so proud and grateful to be a professional player.”
Today, though, she is announcing that she has decided to quit playing because she is so disillusioned by how the club — and women’s football as a whole — have responded to Cusack’s death and the failures, she believes, that led to a previously happy 27-year-old taking her own life.
Wilson says she experienced the “worst six months of my life” after the appointment of Jonathan Morgan as the…
