To even a passing rugby league fan, the sight of watching Rob Burrow lives long in the memory. There was a certain thrill in seeing the smallest man on the pitch toy with his opponents, there one moment and gone the next, leaving a trail of 6ft-something bruisers with their face in the grass.
His glittering rugby career was gilded by silverware, an entire bookcase of team trophies and individual awards, each one a symbol of defiance, confounding conventional wisdom about what a rugby star should look like. And so, after that terrible winter day in 2019 when Burrow was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) and given 18 months to live, perhaps his response should have been no surprise.
