Children in full rugby kits play cheerfully in front of the Featherstone Lions rugby club in Pontefract as adults sporting bright jerseys drink, eat and chat joyfully. The atmosphere is more like a festival than a day of mourning. Then a hush falls over them as Rob Burrow’s hearse appears in the distance, carrying the rugby legend on his final journey home. As the cortege nears, rapturous applause breaks out for a local man who was an inspiration for so many.
Burrow, who died aged 41 in June after battling motor neurone disease (MND) for five years, was a rugby league hero. At the entrance to Mill Pond stadium, where he began his career, a sign reads: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
