There’s something about some special people that make you suspend reality, to believe that their spirit can defy anything.
George ‘Doddie’ Weir was one of those people.
If anything, the scourge of Motor Neurone Disease – which has taken him at the tragically early age of 52 – seemed to make that spirit even stronger.
The situation was hopeless.
There is still no cure for MND, although Doddie’s tireless fund-raising has got us closer to that than anyone could have imagined. Short of an actual miracle, the disease was always going to wear him down in the end.
But you still had hope. His spirit, his ceaseless good humour and humility, his indomitable strength seemed to keep MND at bay for a long time. If anyone could conquer this, you felt, Doddie could.
Given a year, two years tops, when diagnosed in 2016, he was there to deliver the match ball at the New Zealand test at Murrayfield in 2017. Five years later, just three weeks, he did it again.
A character, but also a great player
He was always a character. As a player, Doddie was not a graceful athlete.
He was all elbows and knees and rarely did they seem to be moving in the right order. He ran, as in Bill McLaren’s immortal line, like a demented giraffe on the hoof.
There was always that humour, the feeling that a chance for a laugh and some craic was just around the corner.
But Doddie’s career straddled the change in rugby from amateur to professional.
He was always a far more serious and accomplished a player than the public persona and the permanent smile suggested.
He was a British Lion – cruelly denied a test chance in 1997 in South Africa by a brutal assault in a provincial game. He was a fixture for Melrose, for the Borders, 61 times for Scotland, then for Newcastle and lastly for the Borders once more.
Once he finished playing, Doddie put his attention into successful business, into charity, into just being Doddie.
That ramped up further when he was diagnosed and steeled himself for the incredible fundraising fight through his My Name’5 Doddie Foundation.
‘It’s all for Doddie’
Before the New Zealand game three weeks ago, Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend had visited him, he told writers at his mid-week huddle.
It had “been a really hard week”, for his old friend, said Gregor, and they weren’t sure whether Doddie would be strong enough to come to pitchside on Saturday.
If he did, it would be a huge lift for his spirits, someone suggested. “Exactly. It’s all for Doddie,” said Gregor.
It was massively emotional moment when the Scots and the mighty All Blacks, backed by 67,000 fans, walked over to applaud the ailing hero. It was a fitting goodbye to a great rugby player, but more than that, an incredible man.
In the end, we couldn’t find a miracle for Doddie. But what he did in his fight against MND has given the real chance of a miracle for someone else, for literally thousands of people in the future.
That, rather than silly rugby games, will be his legacy.
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