Ex-Premier League footballers Stephen Darby and Marcus Stewart opened up about their battle with Motor Neurone Disease.
The pair met to debate how the illness has affected them and their households, within the shifting characteristic broadcast on BBC. Former Liverpool, Bradford City and Bolton defender Darby, 35, was identified with the sickness on the age of 29 and was compelled to retire. While Stewart, 51, who performed for Ipswich Town and Sunderland within the top-flight, was identified with the illness in September 2022.
The pair have since executed unbelievable work to boost consciousness for the illness which, in response to the NHS has no remedy, however there are remedies to assist enhance day by day life. The uncommon situation impacts the mind and nervous system, inflicting limbs to be weakened, weight reduction and speech to be slurred.
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Darby and Stewart met in a BBC characteristic the place Stewart pushed Darby round Anfield in a wheelchair, trying out the ex-Reds teenager’s outdated altering rooms. The pair additionally sat and mirrored on the sickness. Darby stated: “MND brings all types of people together. But what is special, is that we are all fighting for the same thing and that’s to find a treatment and a cure.”
Darby continued to discuss the affect that dwelling with the sickness has had on his household, together with his former England ladies’s captain spouse Steph Houghton, including: “It’s harder emotionally for them to see the fall. [It’s] not nice.”
(Image: @BBCBreakfast)
(Image: Getty Images)
Stewart emotionally lauded him for opening up, saying: “See for me what you’ve just said I won’t even be able to speak about that. I don’t want to. You’re braver than I am. I think that but I don’t speak about it. Because I wouldn’t have been as brave as you just were.”
They additionally mentioned whether or not their psychological willpower has come from their footballing backgrounds, which Darby confirmed: “Yeah defo. Do you feel the same way?” Stewart responded: “Yeah I do. You know I feel that soccer background of it being an elite sport, it form of prepares you for what’s occurring now – psychologically.
(Image: PA)
“I think we’re used to living in the moment as a player and we live day by day, week by week, you can’t look four months ahead, you can’t look a year ahead because you don’t know what’s going to go on.”
Darby arrange the Darby Rimmer MND Foundation alongside former serviceman Chris Rimmer, who handed away from the illness in 2022, which has raised £1.3million to battle the sickness.