‘I STILL WAKE UP AND CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT’S HAPPENED. FOOTBALL HELPS TO SORT ME OUT...’
A FORMER Stafford Rangers player has revealed the “living hell” he went through as he lost his wife to cancer last year.
Scott Lindsey is now the manager of Kent-based Chatham Town after a playing career that started in his native West Midlands with Rangers, for whom he played in 1991/92.
Last November, his wife Hayley died aged just 44 after suffering from kidney cancer.
Two days later, Scott was back in the dressing room for Chatham’s match against Crowborough Athletic in the Southern Counties East League, the ninth tier of English football.
“I wanted to take my mind off what had happened. I didn’t want to be sat at home in a dark place,” he told BBC Sport in an emotional interview in which he revealed football had helped him cope with bereavement.
“It was a living hell watching her deteriorate.
“Ten months on, I still wake up and can’t believe what has happened. Football helps sort me out.”
Scott, who still lights a candle for Hayley - his wife of 16 years - every night, is father to three daughters, Millie, 18, Maisie, 15, and Mollie, 10.
As a player, Scott hit his heights with Gillingham in 1994/95, when he played in the Football League, though this time was also tinged with tragedy when his older brother Matthew died in a motorbike accident on his way home after travelling to Kent to watch Scott play.
After ending his playing career back close to home at Tamworth, where he was assistant manager, he had a spell on the coaching staff at Lincoln City, was Swindon Town’s under-18 boss and then helped Forest Green Rovers to promotion to the Football
League in 2017 as assistant to Mark Cooper.
It was while at Forest Green he got the news that Hayley had collapsed in the shower at home, and four months later she had passed away.
“Hayley was a one-off, a great mum, and really house proud,” he says. “Our house was like a show home. She’s probably watching over me thinking ‘you’re not keeping it clean enough’.
“Hayley loved holidays and Christmas. We’ve been known to have the Christmas tree up in October. She’s what I would call a real Medway girl. She lived here all her life.”
At first, Hayley’s prognosis seemed positive, as she had her left kidney removed when the cancer was discovered.
“The surgeon was really happy but Hayley fell ill a few months later. It had come back aggressively,” said Scott, whose Chatham Town visit Folkestone Invicta in the FA Cup second qualifying round tomorrow.
“We’d go and see consultants and it was always bad news, never good news. The whole thing was horrendous.
“We went to see an oncologist at Maidstone Hospital and that’s when we realised there was no way out of this.
“He told Hayley ‘I can send you to the Royal Marsden in London and maybe do a trial but nothing is going to cure you, you are going to die’.
“We just sat there and looked at one another.”
Hayley walked for the last time on her 44th birthday as the cancer
had spread to her spine, leaving her paralysed for the final few weeks of her life.
“She was taken way too soon. I did feel anger,” said Scott, who had taken the part-time role at Chatham by the time his wife died, to “take my mind away from things”.
“It helped me because I needed a couple of nights to get out and coach,” he says.
“Caring for my wife was physically and mentally draining. Watching her dying, my emotions were all over the place.
“After Hayley died, I wanted to get back as quickly as possible and it was important to me I went to the game after she passed away.
“I picked the team, did the team talk, and we won 3-0. I know not everybody would do it that way but it was my way of dealing with what had happened.
“The players all knew. They had a whip-round and bought a name-astar gift for my girls to remind them of their mum.”
Now, Scott has to take on another new management job, that of being “mum and dad” to Millie, Maisie and Mollie, all regular visitors to Chatham’s Bauvill Stadium.
“I’d been away from home for years because of my job and all of a sudden I’m doing their hair, the school run, ironing school uniforms and getting PE kits ready,” he said.
“Hayley’s always in our thoughts. We have a wall at home filled with her pictures.
“Close by is the urn containing her ashes. She’s always with us in the house.”