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Codes unite to honour trio and raise funds for MND
The Guardian
|November 18, 2024
Organisers hope hybrid match of league and union will become an annual event
Sport has the ability to divide us like almost nothing else on this planet and little sums that up better than the near 130-year feud between rugby union and rugby league.
But occasionally, when it matters, sport can unite us against a common cause like almost nothing else - and how that was proven here on a wet and grey Sunday afternoon which brought the two codes together like never before.
Ever since the split of 1895, when league broke away from union, the two sports have never felt so together. The devastating news of Doddie Weir's and Rob Burrow's motor neurone disease diagnoses in recent years sparked a push among both sports to try to find a cure, and that was strengthened when Ed Slater was diagnosed in 2022.
Burrow tragically died in June but one of his last acts was to devise this game with Slater, a hybrid match called the 745 Game - the numbers Burrow, Slater and Weir were synonymous with wearing in their careers - amalgamating the two rules of the codes like nothing this country has seen.
This story is from the November 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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