Rugby league legend Rob Burrow’s “superhero” wife is reduced to floods of tears when he urges her to find someone else when he dies.
Dad-of-three Rob was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in December 2019 and says he is still alive because of wife Lindsey, 39.
NHS physiotherapist Lindsey said: “He always says: ‘Find someone else, you’re still young’.
“There will never be anybody else. No one can ever take Rob’s place. It’s a cliché, isn’t it – love at first sight – but I think that’s true.”
Rob, 40, can no longer walk or talk and has to communicate through a keyboard controlled by his eyes but the couple still manage to smile, laugh and share banter.
Former Scotland rugby union player Doddie Weir, 52, and
footballer Stephen Darby, 34, have been campaigning with Rob for vital research funding.
The trio are among the 5,000 people at any one time in the
UK with MND, the devastating degenerative condition that affects nerves in the brain and spinal cord.
Rob is one of rugby league’s greats, having won eight Super League grand finals with Leeds Rhinos and 20 international caps.
But three years ago he was told he may have only a year, two at most, to live. He told the Mirror, he would “fight until his final breath” to see his children, Macy, 10, Maya, seven, and Jackson, three, grow up.
In a BBC Two documentary about the family’s struggle, Lindsey holds her frail husband up as he watches the kids’ sports day.
She carries him to his wheelchair, supports him in the swimming pool, helps him to the kitchen so they can laugh at his children’s pizza-making skills and, with “unwavering patience”, helps him up the stairs to bed.
Rob said: “I could not ask for a better help than my beautiful wife Lindsey. I know when you get married you say that you will be there in sickness and in health.
“I did not think she signed up to look after me so soon. She is my very own superhero and I could not be alive without her help with everything. I love her so much.”
But Lindsey says: “I’m so lucky to be Rob’s wife, despite the situation that we are in. Would I change things? Of course I would.
“But we can’t, so we just have to make the best of it and enjoy every moment that we have together. But it’s devastating, it’s heartbreaking.”
Lindsey tells the Mirror how she met Rob. She used to dance with his eldest sister and he got her number through mutual friends.
She said: “We did arrange to meet but my mum found out I was going on a date so I stood him up.
“When we did go on a date to the pictures, his mum Irene picked us up.” Mischievous Rob interjected: “I felt sorry for her, because she stalked me for years. I’m only kidding. I have been going out with her since forever.
"She was my childhood sweetheart. I love her more each day. I think about growing old with Lindsey and watching the children grow up and it gives me a goal.”
They married in 2006 and Lindsey said they had the “perfect life” but, looking back, she thinks there may have been signs of MND even before his retirement in 2017.
She recalled him forgetting he had scored a try and a neighbour asking him if he had been drinking due to his slurred speech. Ex-Leeds Rhinos skipper Kevin Sinfield, who later ran seven marathons in seven days to raise money to fight MND, had also been worried about him.
But Rob’s 2019 diagnosis was a “massive shock”. Lindsey said: “If you ask any medical person they would say the one thing I don’t want them getting is MND, because of the brutality of the disease.
“I think Rob probably handled it better than I did at the time because I had that bit of knowledge and I knew the road that lay ahead. He drove home from the hospital appointment and said, ‘It will be all right!’.”
His positivity has rubbed off on the whole family and Lindsey said: “He has too many reasons to live, he wants to see the children grow up.”
She said that through his career 5ft 5in Rob defied the odds: “You think he won’t make it as a rugby player but he did and played at the highest level representing his country.”
Rob, awarded an MBE last year for raising awareness of MND, said the worst thing about the condition is “not being able to be a normal dad to the kids and kick the ball with Jackson and play with the girls.
“My kids have inspired me to be happy and I love it when they are loving life. It makes you never want to give in.
“I love seeing them smile and being so funny.”
In the documentary, his consultant talks to Rob about his
wish – when things are really tough – to go into a hospice. But he tells her: “I am not happy to talk about this.”
Rob, who lives near his parents’ home in Castleford, West Yorkshire, told the Mirror: “I refuse to talk about end-of-life because I’m determined to get better and I look at all the reasons I have got to live.”
Rob Burrow: Living with MND is on Tuesday, October 18, at 7pm on BBC2.
