Welcome back to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times.

I'm Alfie Reynolds back with Alex Lowe this week. Hi, Alex. Hello, Alfie. How you doing? Yeah, very well. Thank you. Not too bad at all. And also joining us from the Wiltshire Studios is Stuart Barnes. How are you, Barnsey? Good to have you back on the Ruck. Thank you, Alfie. I'm delighted to be back. Look, loads to get into today, as there always is, gents, with the second round of the Prem, the champ starting back up at the weekend with Worcester returning to action and, of course, the conclusion of the rugby championship as well. We'll get into all of that, but Alex, we've woken up to the news this morning as all of our listeners would have

done the Lewis Moody 2003 England World Cup winner former captain former Lester Tigers former

former Bath has announced that he's been diagnosed with MND really sad news to to start our

morning but what an unbelievable player what an unbelievable bloke of those things are true. All those things are true.

Alfie, unbelievable player, unbelievable bloke and devastating news for him and his family.

My phone pinged at about 7 o'clock this morning with a statement coming through to tell us all

and that he would be

appearing on BBC, uh, at about 10 past eight. And I watched that. And it's just, it's just

heartbreaking because you know it, you know what it means is as Lewis said, it's, it's a death

sentence. And he's incredibly stoic, incredibly he's always been this who, his, you know, his resting faces with a

smile. Like, he's, he's the guy who's attacked life to the full. He played his heart out on the

field. He's done the same off the field. He's raised millions of pounds for brain treatment

charities. This disease is, is just incredibly unfair. And watching Lewis talk about having to tell his

boys what he'd what he'd been diagnosed with was just was horrific and just a very dark start

to the day and it's quite a hard thing to process really because you know you know from following

other players in our sphere and we'll talk to

colleague whilst tom kershaw is coming on who's investigated mn d across sport but in our sphere of

rugby we know from from us van de vesthazen and and obviously doughty weir and and now ed slater is

is living with it and now Lewis.

We know what it means and it's just horrific.

Horific news to wake up to for a guy who's given his heart and soul to the sport

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