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 won’t be able to walk soon’. It was horrific. That was my last day at Forest Green. I had to take time off to nurse her.”
Lindsey had a hospital bed installed in their living room and the pair took regular trips to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for treatment, which included partaking in a trial for a new set of drugs to help prolong her life.
Two months later, Hayley died aged 44, leaving behind Lindsey and their three girls, Millie, Maisie and Molly (now aged 21, 19 and 13).
“That was tough, but I also felt proud that I made her happy and comfortable in the last two months as much as I could,” he says. “The girls witnessed their mum dying over a period of time.”
Lindsey had taken up a part-time role coaching at then-ninth-tier side Chatham Town. Two days after Hayley’s death, he was back in the dugout. It was his way of dealing with the grief.
“I didn’t have a clue what to do,” he says. “I couldn’t even switch the heating on. I didn’t know who the energy supplier was. I’d never ironed anything in my life. Hayley did everything. I went from being a professional football coach to now ironing school uniforms, plaiting hair and doing the school run. Although my mum was living with me, I didn’t want her to take on that role because it wasn’t fair, she wasn’t well herself. Two years later, she got cancer and passed away, too.
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“The girls would come home, laughing at me, saying, ‘I put my PE kit on today and it had a big hole in it from the iron’. I think they love me for the fact that I tried my hardest and was useless at it, but they knew I would always be there for them.”
Lindsey has a new partner, Kelly, and they live together with his three girls and her three children from a previous relationship.
“I’ve changed as a person since losing my wife to cancer,” he says. “You only get one go at life, you only get one chance to make a difference.”
During his playing days, Lindsey was a solid right-back. His dad, Keith, was a footballer, playing for Scunthorpe United, Port Vale and Gillingham, among others. He remembers Keith taking him to watch Scunthorpe play Liverpool as a child in the 1970s.
“We were waiting after the game and I remember being wowed after seeing Ray Clemence in the flesh,” he says.
“Next thing, he turns round to my dad and says, ‘Hello, Keith’. I thought, ‘How the f*** do you know my dad?’. These were my heroes. A minute later, Kevin Keegan comes out and does the same. They had all played together at Scunthorpe a few years before that. It was at that point I realised my dad was a footballer and that I wanted to be one, too.”
Lindsey’s career largely scaled non-League but he did emulate his dad by playing for Division Three (now League Two) side Gillingham in 1994. A year later, he joined Dover Athletic of the fifth tier.
Aged 22, he was living in Kent with Alan Nicholls, a talented goalkeeper of the same age who had played for England Under-21s and was now at Gillingham. On the evening of November 24, 1995, Nicholls received a call from manager Tony Pulis asking for a favour. Stalybridge Celtic were due to face Dover that weekend but did not have a goalkeeper, so Pulis wanted to see if Nicholls would play. He obliged and lined up against his housemate Lindsey the following day.
Lindsey recalls the day vividly, and the tragic turn of events which followed.
Scott’s brother Matthew, 25, travelled down from Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire to watch the game with their dad. Dover lost 3-1 and Lindsey was sent off in the match. After the game, Nicholls went back north with the Lindsey family — Scott, Keith and Nicholls in the car and Matthew on his motorbike. It was Keith’s birthday and they had planned to go out that evening. Halfway through the journey, near Peterborough, they stopped briefly for Matthew to refuel.
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“My brother was saying he was a bit bored, so Alan offered to travel with him, which was odd because only an hour before he said he’d never get on a motorbike again after being shaken up in a previous incident,” Lindsey says. “He got kitted up and grabbed a spare helmet from my boot.
“I said, ‘We’re gonna get going, just head up the A1 and catch us in a minute. That’s the worst thing I did, because we left them. I never saw them again.
“Forty-five minutes later, I’m still driving up north and I’m thinking, ‘Where the f*** are these two?’. So we turned around and went back.”
Lindsey drove for around half an hour when he was met with a road closure and flashing lights. Matthew’s motorbike had crashed, and he and Nicholls died at the scene. Four hours later, Lindsey and his dad were at the morgue identifying the pair.
“I always blamed myself for it because he came down to watch me play and, if he hadn’t, that wouldn’t have happened.”
Three days later, Lindsey was back playing again. There was no support for mental health in those days. No counselling. “I tried to get on with it, but I went backwards in terms of my playing career,” he says.
The upsetting thing for Lindsey was seeing the toll it had on his parents, especially his dad, who turned to alcohol. “I always felt that (Matthew and Nicholls’ motorcycle crash) killed him,” he says. “He actually passed away seven years after that.” He was 56.
It is ironic that Lindsey and Crawley have aligned at this juncture of their journeys. The Sussex club have only consistently been a Football League club since 2011 and only reached the top tier of non-League in 2005.
Lindsey, after a brief stint as head coach of Swindon Town in 2022, took over a Crawley side in January 2023 who were 21st in League Two, two points above the relegation zone. After steering them to safety that year, Lindsey needed to make changes for this season. Professionalism was a big issue, and popular players were shown the door.
Last summer, Lindsey built a hungry side, finding value in the non-League market and those not wanted by other EFL sides. They include Laurence Maguire, brother of Manchester United’s Harry, who has impressed in defence after joining on loan from this season’s National League winners Chesterfield. Midfielders Liam Kelly and Klaidi Lolos were also plucked from non-League, both free agents after leaving Rochdale and Oxford City. Striker Danilo Orsi, who joined from Grimsby Town, scored a hat-trick in the play-off semi-final second leg and has 22 league goals this season.
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Usually, perhaps through superstition, teams are afraid to mention the word “promotion” around the training ground, but reaching Wembley has been an ambition since August.
“It’s called the ‘law of attraction’,” Lindsey says. “The more you talk about something, the more you manifest it, the more they believe it. There’s only one reason we’re here: that’s to be successful. So, let’s talk about Wembley. Why not?”
Crawley have impressed this season with their attractive, high-energy style of football, playing aggressively through the thirds, with Lindsey citing Pep Guardiola, Eddie Howe and Russell Martin among his coaching influences.
Their expected goals difference of 10.9 is the highest in League Two — they scored 80 goals from an xG of 69.1 and it reflects a side who have exceeded expectations all season. Meanwhile, only two sides bettered their average possession percentage of 57.1 in the league this campaign.
Having started 2024 in 14th, a run of 10 wins and four draws in 21 games saw them secure the play-offs on the final day of the regular season.
On Sunday, they meet Crewe Alexandra at Wembley and, for Lindsey, it will be the latest chapter in an incredible story.
“I will probably look round at the seat where my wife was sat when we won promotion with Forest Green (in 2017) when I was assistant there,” he says.
“I’ll feel the presence of my dad, my mum, my brother, too; they were big football people. Everywhere I go, I feel their energy. Sunday will be the same.”
(Top image: Scott with wife Hayley, celebrating the semi-final win over MK Dons. Photos: Scott Lindsey/Getty Images)
