The "proud" dad of rugby league legend Rob Burrow sobbed as he begged the Government to “please do something”.
Geoff Burrow’s son was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in 2019, two years after he retired from the game.
The former Leeds Rhinos star, his family and friends, have been campaigning tirelessly for extra funding into the terminal disease since.
Describing his family’s anguish, Mr Burrow wept and said: “If the MPs had to live one day, or one week, as a family, with somebody with MND, they’d do something. Please do something."
During the television interview he asked BBC Look North to keep his tears in, adding: “Because we cry every day. Rob smiles every day, I don’t know what he’s going through.
“I know what we’re going through as a family and it’s cruel.
“People are trying so hard to raise money and we just want all that money and some funding from the Government to help.”
His son, Rob, has been living with MND for almost two years now and now needs a wheelchair and speaks via a computer, using recorded samples of his voice.
Rob, 38, who lives with his wife of 20 years, Lyndsey, and their three young children, Macy, nine, Maya, five, and Jackson, two, has told how the disease “comes for your voice, then it takes your legs.”
His dad said: “It’s the hope, people with MND don’t have anything else but hope.
“I’d like to ask the MP and all MPs from different constituencies...we need targeted funding for those people.
“Funding for research is the hope and the end of the tunnel because there must be an end, a cure, a treatment found soon, it has for Covid and other serious illnesses. Please, please, fund it.”
After his heartbreaking interview, he added on Twitter: “I never mean to upset people but I just want the Government to at least TRY to help MND sufferers.”
There was outrage from campaigners last month after their bid for £50million funding was ignored by Chancellor Rishi Sunak who did not include it in the public spending review.
Rob said: “I am devastated by the news. As I have said before, MND is the forgotten disease, a disease nobody cares about...”
Campaigners were hoping for funding towards a pioneering research institute, which would accelerate the search for a cure and treatment for the terminal disease that leaves sufferers locked in failing bodies.
According to the NHS MND is caused by a problem with cells in the brain and nerves called motor neurones. These cells gradually stop working over time.
