What price is worth paying for sporting greatness?
AWFUL QUESTION THAT IS RAISED BY BURROW’S TRAGIC PLIGHT
There is a poignant moment in the BBC’s harrowing portrayal of Rob Burrow’s life with motor neurone disease when his father Geoff thinks aloud and wonders whether the death sentence his son has received is all his fault for letting him play rugby.
The decline of Burrow from the fizzing heartbeat of an all- conquering Leeds Rhinos side is heartbreaking to observe in the year since his diagnosis.
Wheelchair- bound, the father- of- three no longer has a voice with which to speak but he can still cry, and his distress is made painfully clear through the tears.
The documentary ‘ Rob Burrow: My Year with MND’, screened in midweek, will be repeated tomorrow afternoon before the Challenge Cup final between Leeds and Salford. It is required viewing. You don’t need to be a rugby league fan to be moved by it, just a human being.
As the smallest player in Super League, Burrow was always brave. But laying it all out there for the world to see the cruelty of this savage disease is a monumentally brave act.
The point of doing so is not just to press the pause button on our small- scale daily concerns and place them into some proper context – although half an hour in Burrow’s company certainly does that. It is to raise awareness of MND and help unlock resources for the research that will one day find a cure.
The uncomfortable thought for sport, as articulated by dad Geoff Burrow, is what if part of the cure is to avoid activities such as rugby?
There is no in- depth study as yet to prove a link between head blows and MND but the circumstantial evidence is arrayed in a tragic hall of fame. Joost van der Westhuizen, the Springbok great, was taken by the dreadful disease; Doddie Weir, the Scotland giant, continues his fight against it, as does Burrow.
And it isn’t just rugby. MND extinguished the life of ex- Rangers player
Fernando Ricksen a year ago at the age of 43. Fellow footballers Lenny Johnrose and Stephen Darby also have it.
Anyone can contract MND – six people are diagnosed with it every day in the UK – but an initial study last year suggested that the risks of developing the condition are more than eight times higher amongst those involved in top- level contact sport.
Repeated heavy blows to the head and spine are thought to be a cause. With so little known about the triggers for MND, no one can say with 100 per cent assurance but logic points in that direction.
Burrow’s mum Irene cannot conclude that it is the cause.
“I couldn’t watch rugby after,” she says in the documentary. “I’ve always loved rugby but I blamed it. Is it all the knocks he’s had?”
Eight Grand Final victories, two Challenge Cups, three World Club
Challenges and
20 international caps for England and Great
Britain. Was it all worth it? The science would say no and as we all know now, it is help but wise to follow the science. But what the medal ledger can never show is the feelings sport gave Burrow, his best years spent living the life he dreamed of. The unbreakable bond formed going to the well together with his Leeds team- mates, the precious moments in the changing room together afterwards.
Every precaution should be taken to protect players but in the end sport, like life, contains risk. If he knew then what he knows now would Geoff Burrow’s son still have pulled on a rugby jersey?
I think that he would.
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