It’s a friendship that captured the country’s hearts, but Kevin Sinfield has now shared the promise he made to Rob Burrow following his MND diagnosis.
As Sinfield embarks on another challenge to raise funds and awareness for MND in December, he’s shared more on the initial promise he made to Burrow when he was first diagnosed.
Speaking to Lawrence Dallaglio and Scott Quinnell on their Stick to Rugby podcast, Sinfield shared the reasoning behind his first fundraiser for Burrow and his family.
He said: “The first run was made around a promise I’d made to Rob.
“After he was diagnosed at Christmas 2019, I promised him that by Christmas 2020, he would have an amount of money in his bank account.
“Obviously, because of Covid, I’d got to September about £70k short. I wanted him to see I’d tried everything I could. The first aim for to raise £77k, and we hit £2.8 million.
“When I’m overwhelmed, I just take it back to the first one when I was just doing a bit of running for a mate.”
Kevin Sinfield talks Leeds Rhinos brotherhood and connection with Rob Burrow
Whilst Sinfield has been leading the cause for more MND support, he’s said the connection with his former Leeds Rhinos teammates is keeping him going now.
He shared: “It was all steeped in time in the dressing room, and the experiences, both in training, good moments on the field, and difficult moments on the field.
“There’s a whole load of adversity between the pair of us and the group. When you go through something like that together, it sets you up to be able to look after each other still.”
The Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon is now held in honour of the Rhinos legend, but it wasn’t all plain sailing initially to get backing for the event.
Sinfield finished: “After we’d done the first challenge, it was a dream of mine to have a mass participation event, and I thought if a thousand people all raise a tenner, it’s a lot easier than trying to raise £10,000 on my own.
“We needed 2500 people to make it work, and the first one was 12,500.”
