Lewis Moody Seeks Bigger MND Impact After Diagnosis

Lewis Moody says his Motor Neurone Disease diagnosis has given him a renewed purpose, and he now wants to have as big an impact on MND as possible. The former England flanker said he is focused on raising money and awareness after being told eight months ago that he had the disease.

Moody Takes Control

He said he wanted to be the one to share the news and to control how it was handled. “I've actually questioned myself about was it the right thing to do because it was only two weeks after I found out. But I want to be the person that shares the information, I wanted to be in control of that and how I shared it,” Moody said.

The 2003 Rugby World Cup winner retired from rugby in 2012, but he said the diagnosis has pushed him into a different kind of competition. “Winning looks like having a wonderful purpose that I am utterly passionate about,” he said.

Bradford-on-Avon Pressure

Moody said the reaction from people around him has been overwhelming, but it has also made daily life harder to separate from the diagnosis. “It's a huge realisation that the emotion, whenever I get emotional, is when I think about the support that people are giving,” he said. “The love that I felt, that we felt.”

He also described a shift after 14 years without what he saw as a proper fight, saying, “For the last 14 years you feel like you've not had a proper fight to get into. Like your teeth have been a little bit blunt. You're happily just getting on in Bradford-on-Avon but now all of a sudden you've got almost reinvigorated.”

That new drive is tied to a practical aim. Moody said he wants to raise as much money and awareness as possible, and he has not begun to process fully what having MND means. “You're given the diagnosis and it feels unbelievably negative, all the noise around it is negative, your thought process is negative - but actually when you sit down with other specialists you start realising that no one individual is obviously the same,” he said.

Lewis Moody And MND

He said one of the hardest parts has been the constant questions from others, which make the subject difficult to escape. “Your first question to me is: 'How are you?'” Moody said. “It has been slightly overwhelming, I suppose.”

For Moody, the next phase is not about returning to rugby. It is about using the profile that came with England, the 2003 title and his years in the game to push money and awareness toward a disease with no cure, while he still has the time to move things forward.