Rob Burrow’s wife Lindsey lifts lid on final year with rugby star

The grieving widow of rugby league player Rob Burrow, who died last year from motor neurone disease (MND), after defying all predictions about how long he would live and raising more than £15 million to help others fighting this cruel disease, has written a moving memoir about their last year together.

Lindsey Burrow lost her husband Rob, aged 41, who played for Leeds Rhinos, on June 2 last year, four and a half years after being diagnosed with MND.

Now 42, she was 37 when Burrow was diagnosed in December 2019 and 41 when he died in Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield.

The couple had begun dating when Lindsey was just 15 and, by his death, had spent half her life together.

“Lindsey is far tougher than any of the men I have ever played with or against over the years,” Burrow always said of his childhood sweetheart.

Now she has written a memoir, ‘Take Care’, with an introduction by Prince William, revealing the couple’s last year together.

Lindsey, who lives in Pontefract, West Yorks, with their three children three children, two daughters, Macy and Maya, and a son, Jackson, told the Times magazine: “I just saw looking after him as a huge honour and a privilege. I know he would have done it for me.

“MND robbed Rob of being the dad he wanted to be to our three children. He couldn’t read them a bedtime story or kick a ball about with Jackson as he got older, so that was hard for me emotionally. But it never changed my love for Rob.

“The power of our love really got us through those hard times, despite all the challenges. Mentally he was all there; he was just paralysed in a body that no longer functioned. He couldn’t clean his teeth, scratch his nose, feed himself, go to the loo, but he was present right until the end – probably the last month or so.

“He would use his eyes and his equipment to text me, ‘I love you, darling,’ or, ‘Have a great day,’ or, when I was at work, ‘I can’t wait to see you.’ He never stopped making that effort.

“It was only a month before he died that his messages to me didn’t really make sense any more. Rob taught us all to live in the moment. There was no bitterness, no resentment. It brings me solace to think of him as happy.”

Lindsey reveals that it was Keven Sinfield, director of rugby at Leeds Rhinos, where Burrow was, by then, a coach to the juniors, who first raised the alarm that something might be wrong.

He thought Burrow might have been drinking as he was slurring his words.

Lindsey adds: “It hadn’t really registered with me. Rob was a family man. He never went out drinking with the boys.

“I only found out later that Rob had been secretly googling MND. Head injuries in players and the link with neurological disorders are always there in the back of the mind.

“He was fit as a fiddle and, pound for pound, had been the strongest player in the Leeds squad.”

While other tests came back clear, nerve conduction test results revealed Burrow had MND just as the couple were planning their son’s first birthday in a new house. Lindsey remembers waiting at the hospital with Rob for his results.

“When we went into the room, a nurse was there too. I should have known something was wrong then.”

“I took it worse than Rob initially, because working in healthcare I knew what it meant. I knew what we were facing. Rob was very much, ‘Thank God it’s me and not you or the kids.’

“We had two choices. We could either feel sorry for ourselves, asking, ‘Why has this happened? Why us?’ Or we could just live each and every day in the moment and make happy memories with the children.

“We decided we had to enjoy what time we had left as a family. That was a real turning point for me. I thought to myself, ‘If Rob can be positive and he’s the one suffering, he’s the one with this terrible diagnosis hanging over him, then I’ve got no reason to be resentful. I needed to be positive for Rob and for the children. It’s their childhood.’ Rob’s positivity rippled through the whole family.”

The Rob Burrow story touched the Prince of Wales deeply. In January 2024, he went to Headingley Stadium in Leeds to present both Burrow and Sinfield with a CBE. Burrow had already been awarded an MBE in 2021 for services to rugby and the MND community.

Now William has written the foreword to Lindsey’s book and also recorded it for the audiobook.

“I know I am not alone in feeling great admiration for how she has kept going in the face of such adversity, he said.

“Her unwavering love for and dedication to her husband has been plain to see, both throughout his illness and following his tragic passing.”

* Take Care: A Memoir of Love, Family and Never Giving Up by Lindsey Burrow (Century, £22) is published on February 27.