You see how many people are willing to help... I am privileged DODDIE I am into extra time now. But I love a fight and I am still living life

SURROUNDED by the trophies accumulated by a football club over more than a century, Doddie Weir temporarily abandons his rugby past and dives, studs up, into fitba’ speak.

‘I am into extra time,’ he says, the beaming smile failing to diminish the dark truth of his words. Brutally, inescapably and realistically, George Wilson Weir should be dead. He is 49. Instead, he quietly but unmistakably commands the Celtic boardroom as he seeks to raise further funds to battle the motor neurone disease that is killing him.

‘I am still here after three years,’ he says, referring to his diagnosis in 2017. ‘Not many last longer than three years. People can be dead within months. Why am I here after this length of time? I really don’t know.’

He has, though, more than suspicion about how he has survived the cruellest of diseases.

‘I have no medical evidence to support it,’ he says. ‘But I am not on any drugs that are not available to anyone else. It is down to my mental attitude. Is that mental attitude a result of my sporting background? Definitely.

‘When you are at that level, you have the mindset that you never give up. If you have an issue, get it fixed. Somebody pinches your jersey and takes your place in the team… what do you do? Do you give in or fight to get it back?’

Weir excelled on the pitch. He played with distinction for Scotland (61 caps) and the British and Irish Lions. As a mobile, combative lock, he made his living at Newcastle Falcons and Border Reivers for a decade from 1995. A life of business, farming and punditry seemed to beckon. MND intervened.

‘The problem with this illness is that people are sent away with a devastating diagnosis and basically have to self-medicate,’ he says. ‘There was a feeling that there was nothing anyone could do. There is not that feeling now.’

His foundation has changed the landscape. My Name’5 Doddie has raised more than £5million to seek answers to the most pressing of questions. How to fight a disease that is ultimately fatal for all who suffer from it?

‘I found that nothing had really changed since Jimmy died,’ says Weir, referring to ‘Jinky’ Johnstone, Lisbon Lion and voted Celtic’s greatest ever player, who died from the disease 14 years yesterday. ‘There have been no new drugs, no new treatments, no pathways to recovery that have come along since the passing of Jimmy. I don’t think this is acceptable and we want to change that. It is a fight. But we are giving it a good go.’

Weir’s determination to change that resignation to MND has now embraced the Celtic family. He is sitting in the club’s boardroom after announcing The Lions’ Roar charity match in conjunction with Celtic FC Foundation, with proceeds funding initiatives to tackle the disease.

This, too, is going into extra time. The game was postponed because of the coronavirus. Ticket holders will be reimbursed and a new date announced. The match will go ahead at a date to be announced. That commitment is part of the Weir DNA.

‘That fight remains within me,’ he says. ‘The challenge with MND is out there. So this match is part of that challenge.’

He knows he has always been a fighter. ‘I was involved with horses before rugby. My attitude was that everything was about competition. I loved it and needed it,’ he says. ‘I loved analysing what was going on in the cross country, how to jump that fence, what route to take.

‘It was you and the horse working together. That helped me with my team-mates later in rugby. I have been very privileged to experience that team unity. It is the same now. The team that is with me now gives me the support that is truly amazing.

‘You see how many people are willing to help, to lend their services. I am privileged. It gives me a lift but it also lifts every MND sufferer. Maybe something finally is being done.’

His entrance into the boardroom prompts an affecting scene. A woman taking a tour of the stadium stops to thank Weir for his inspiration and he graciously replies with a smile and a self-deprecating quip.

‘I struggle when people are being nice to me,’ he chuckles. ‘When people come up and say lovely things, I always want to say it is not about me but how to tackle this illness. I thank them for their support. I thank Celtic FC Foundation for selecting our charity for this match.’

But does he accept that he has become a loved figure in modern Scotland? ‘It is very moving,’ he admits. ‘The love that we have been given, the love that we have been shown… I feel I wouldn’t be here without that.’

There has been the soft consolation of compassion. There has also been the hard reality of personal, true grit.

The response was emphatic.

MND was not going to be allowed a victory. ‘My doctor a year ago wanted to put a peg in my tummy, a feeding tube. I said no because that would have meant that MND had won that battle. I told him to get lost, in the nicest way possible. I still haven’t done it,’ he says.

There is a journalistic imperative to ask about old battles on the pitch but at this point it seems not only irrelevant but vaguely insulting. He joshes energetically, instead, about a less than stellar personal history in football.

‘I played once as a goalkeeper,’ he says. ‘We also played at Newcastle Falcons with such as Steve Watson, who was a good defender and midfielder. The

football players taught us about exploiting space and having awareness of what was going on around you. We taught them about toughening up, not falling down every five minutes.’

He laughs at this but knows it is all in a past blessedly touched with the joy of doing not only what he was great at, but what he loved. His purpose now has become deeply serious, but how has it all marked him?

‘I don’t know if I have changed,’ he says, reflecting on the past three years. ‘I don’t think I have learned too much about myself. I have always had that focus, drive, determination. My headspace is the strongest pill I have got.’

He stops to throw a question to Kathy, his wife of 23 years. ‘Have I changed?’ he asks. The answer is that he has not. Perhaps with the disclaimer that he has slowly become more frustrated about what he cannot do, particularly on their farm between Lauder and Melrose.

He says his biggest challenge is to corral his three teenage sons — Hamish, Angus and Ben — into meaningful employment. There is, of course, a lightness in this but he does not shrink from the stark importance of his family life. Asked what he looks forward to, he replies without hesitation: ‘The next day.’ He adds: ‘You can spend time discussing things that are coming in the summer. But am I going to be there or am I not? So you take every day one at a time.

‘The most important thing is I want to spend time with my kids. We have had some amazing memories and the past three years have created even more. I once lived for the future. I tried to put away a wee bit for retirement, worked away to pay off the mortgage. And then, out of the blue, I get MND.

‘So it is all about memories, how to live in the day and create them.’

The work of the foundation clearly not only enthuses him but gives him strength. ‘The bigger the team, the better your team, the better the result,’ he says. ‘You know that when you watch sport. You can get a team of no stars but genuine triers. The harder they work, the better the result. We are bringing a team together to fight this horrific issue. We are making a difference.’

My Name’5 Doddie helps individual sufferers with grants to make life easier but has also reached out to leading neuroscientists, professors and medical researchers to become part of a panel that gives advice on work towards finding a cure.

‘My mother sadly passed away in June after suffering with cancer,’ he says. ‘The last week she gave away her engagement ring to my niece. That was sort of her giving up the fight. You could see that and seven days later she had died. I understand that. But I am going to fight this. I love a fight.’

His gaze is fierce. ‘I am living life. Still living life.’