Scott Lindsey stood arms aloft, taking in the adulation of his supporters. He had just witnessed his Crawley Town side dismantle MK Dons in the League Two-play off semi-final to reach Wembley for the first time and, rightly, he and his team were taking it all in.
The eight goals they scored across two games may have surprised those outside of West Sussex but the manner of the victory — the bravery, the skill, the dominance — reflected a side in Lindsey’s image.
Tipped for relegation at the start of the season, Crawley are 90 minutes from reaching the third tier. It would bookmark a long and winding journey for Lindsey, 52, one of tragedy, grief, passion and positivity.
It was the summer of 2019 and Lindsey, then assistant manager at Forest Green Rovers, was putting his team through a gruelling pre-season training camp in Devon when he received a phone call.
His wife, Hayley, who had stage four kidney cancer, had collapsed in the shower. “They’d taken her kidney out before this and then we were going on the surgeon saying he’d got it all out,” Lindsey says, “But because it’s stage four, there was a chance it could come back.”
The cancer had grown into her spine and her legs started to get weaker. “They said, ‘It’s going to eventually paralyse you, you…
