Thousands of people lined the 12- mile route to say a final farewell to rugby league legend Rob Burrow as his funeral cortege made his final journey from Leeds today
He had enjoyed the adulation of the crowds throughout his life and thousands turned out today to pay homage to rugby league legend Rob Burrow.
They broke into spontaneous applause all along the 12-mile route taken by his funeral cortege. The Motor Neuron Disease campaigner made his final journey from Leeds, where he played almost 500 times for the Rhinos, to Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
There, a service was held in private for the 161-strong congregation. His widow Lindsey, 41, mum to their children Macy, 12, Maya, nine, and Jackson, five, pointed out Featherstone Lions Rugby Club, where Rob started out his rugby life in the junior ranks, as the cortege went past.
At the club’s main entrance, young players stood side by side, their arms around each other’s shoulders, to see the silver hearse carrying the coffin with floral tributes to ‘son’, ‘bro’ and ‘dad’. Rob’s best friend Kevin Sinfield flew 11,500-miles from the Lions Tour of New Zealand for the service on ‘Rob Burrow Day’.
Today was chosen to raise the profile of the campaign to fund research into MND, which so cruelly claimed Rob’s life on June 2. Kevin, 43, helped raise £15m for MND research, with work starting on the £6.8m centre in Rob’s name at Leeds hospital last month. Seven was the number which Rob wore on his back, and many wore that shirt with his name in tribute to him. Young and old, babes in arms, fans from London, Wigan, the Wirral, many in the colours of their teams, thronged the funeral route.
They told of a man who was 5ft 5in in stature but stood out among the giants of rugby league for his raw courage. At Featherstone Lions Rugby Club, his photo was up in the clubhouse, where many fans recalled his playing days in a book of remembrance. Clive Tennant, 68, the club’s former chairman, said: “He was always outstanding, he just shone from a very early age. He was small in stature but a giant of a man with a heart like a lion. There was so little known about MND when he was diagnosed. But now there is.
“It showed real courage to do that the way that he did. Along with Doddie Weir, he put others before himself to raise money for research and to help them find a cure.” Chris Morgan, 43, who played in the junior ranks at the club, two years above Rob, described him as simply the best. He recalled: “He was very little when he was a junior and people said he would never make it.
“He proved them all wrong. If you look at him as a player, he was the best that Great Britain has seen. What he did afterwards really took some bottle. He fought to the end. He never gave up and he raised millions of pounds to help fight that terrible disease.” His dad John Morgan, 72, said: “I remember coming back from Wembley to see him and singing all the way home. We used to do bus trips from here to watch him play.”
Tim Williamson, whose son plays in the junior team represented at Featherstone’s Mill Pond Stadium, added: “He is an inspiration to so many people. I am very proud not just of what he achieved in his career, but of what he did afterwards. I was at Wakefield station when a friend pointed out Rob and told me: ‘He is going to be the next big thing’. I must admit I found it hard to believe as he was so small, but what a player.
“I remember him throwing a punch at a New Zealand player who was twice his size. He would not back down for anybody.” Rob urged his many admirers to ‘never waste a moment of their lives’. He recorded video messages for the special future days of his widow and children.
Lindsey said the Pride of Britain Winner, as the face of MND, had left an incredible legacy and “made the world a better place”. He had a 17-year career, winning eight Super League Grand Finals, three World Club Challenges and two Challenge Cups. In 2019, two years after his retirement from the sport, he was diagnosed with MND.
He was made an MBE in the 2021 New Year Honours for his services to rugby league and the MND community, and was promoted to a CBE in the New Year Honours in 2024. He died at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield. Bob Woodhead, who coached Burrow as a junior player at Traveller Saints, which later became Featherstone Lions, described him as a “keen, enthusiastic and polite” young man. “He was a privilege to coach, to be honest,” Mr Woodhead said. “It was humbling to see what he did for MND. I think the fundraising will carry on and long may it continue.
“Rob never turned away anyone for an autograph, a photograph or a selfie. In my eyes he was one of the best players in the Super League era. But as a person, he was just a lovely, lovely lad and I’m proud to have met him.” The cortege travelled 1.5 miles of Wakefield Road outside Featherstone’s ground, with crowds all along the way. Andy Sellars, 53, who lives nearby, said: “Why they never made Rob a Sir I will never know. But Kevin Sinfield will always be Sir Kevin to me.”
Rob’s final message was remembered by many, as was the moment Kevin carried him over the line at the end of the 2023 Leeds Marathon, a moment which captured their unbreakable bond. Kevin said Rob’s death was the moment he had dreaded, and that the world had lost a man who had been a “friend to so many”. Rob wanted his final message to be his epitaph: ‘whatever your personal battle, be brave and face it’. He was a man of his word.
