Rob Wainwright’s Doddie Aid call to arms
Fresh out of a baltic pond filming his latest promo, Rob Wainwright dialled into Zoom from the Isle of Coll. The small island in the inner Hebrides takes over two hours to reach by ferry and is most notable for being the area that the ‘Katie Morag’ stories are based off.
For over 500 years Coll was home to clan Maclean. Nowadays it is campaign headquarters for Doddie Aid and the event’s commander in chief, the former British and Irish Lion.
The idea of the mass participation first came to Wainwright, who captained Scotland 16 times during his 37 caps, whilst attending the Thistle suite at BT Murrayfield one match day.
On this occasion, his partner in crime, George ‘Doddie’ Weir was auctioning off photos with Joost van der Westhuizen. While Doddie had recently been diagnosed with motor neurone disease, van der Westhuizen was nearing the end of his fight with months left to live.
Doddie’s showmanship raised thousands of pounds for the newly formed My Name’5 Doddie Foundation in the blink of an eye.
“It took him about 30 seconds to extract £30,000 from six people in the room, £5,000 each just by getting everyone to stand up and sit down if you’re if you’re not happy to pay a thousand pounds. Most people sat down and then by time we got to £5,000 he had six,” recalled Wainwright.
“I always think about all the people that sat down that would have liked to have contributed as well and the original start of Doddie Aid was called Doddie Gump,” he added.
Since then, Doddie Aid has grown arms and legs, raising millions of pounds to help find a cure for MND. However, the inaugural Doddie Gump was very nearly a one off as Wainwright and fellow Coll resident, Ian Fraser were unsure as to how many would take part in the 2018 Doddie Gump ‘March of 1000 Headbands’ through Rome.
“The thing took off without us realising it and we turned up with a couple of thousand headbands and a big mob of 6,000 people all wanting headbands and it was like the final scene of Trading Places.
“Serendipity meant that there was a red light that the Scotland team were held up just as we walked past that area. We were looking out and there was Gregor [Townsend], James Robson and other people from our era in the bus and it was just a magical event.
“If we hadn’t had that we probably would have thought. ‘Oh God’, right? This is a lot of work and hasn’t really got any traction, but it ended with this magical March and a huge high.”
Wainwright has overseen the evolution of Doddie Aid, transforming into a movement with over 17,000 people ready to participate in 2023.
It should come as no surprise that the event has so much support across the United Kingdom. Over 80,000 have watched Doddie’s memorial service, including a grandstand at Melrose RFC that was packed to the rafters.
“Before the service started the amount of joviality there was, was rather bizarre to witness on what should have been such a sober occasion, but it shouldn’t have been a sober occasion. This is the whole thing about Doddie, he wanted it to be a happy occasion.”
Both Wainwright and John ‘The Great White Shark’ Jeffrey used the occasion to hammer home the imperative need to continue the fight against MND and drive Doddie’s purpose forward.
“The takeaway moment for me at the memorial service was JJ saying one in 300 people in Scotland are going to suffer from MND, and there’s 600 in the church. That is why we are pushing, to try and find solutions for a disease that has no treatments at the moment,” said Wainwright.
“The offset catch phrases is ‘it’s not incurable, it’s just underfunded’. But it’s been so chronically underfunded that there wasn’t a big queue [of researchers] to the best of my knowledge.”
“I think it would be a brave politician in the face of all these voices that doesn’t deliver on £50m. As with all these things, the pressure needs to be kept up to get full delivery. At the other end of the spectrum there needs to be enough research for it to fund and one of the problems is the research setup is taking a while for the whole thing to crank up,” Wainwright added.
Throughout his tireless campaigning Doddie knew full well that his efforts were unlikely to aid himself.
“We haven’t been able to help Doddie. I think he always knew that whatever he pushed probably wasn’t going to benefit him.
“He still pushed it and hopefully we can push to get changes that will benefit some of the people – the Ed Slaters, the Davy Zyws you know, the characters that we’ve met through this this journey we’re on and all the ones who don’t know.”
Doddie joined the MND community in 2016 and never allowed himself to feel sorry about his situation. In his words he was incredibly fortunate to be supported by his wife, Kathy and his sons Hamish, Angus and Ben. He felt a strong sense of duty to be a voice for all the people that aren’t that lucky to try and push forward and find solutions to this awful disease.
“The only weapon you really have in this is positive mental mindset and I think that’s the thing that shone through and made him such a much-loved icon of not just the rugby world, of Britain,” Wainwright said.
Wainwright saw Weir for the last time six weeks before he passed away.
“Before we lost him, he managed to come up and we had an amazing day and my final pictures are just outside the Ardnamurchan Distillery with Doddie and the body is a mess but the smile is still there and it’s a great last memory to have.”
2023 marks the first Doddie Aid without the mad giraffe in our world. The rugby community and the wider world are once again ready to lace up their running shoes, assemble their pelotons and play their part in finding a cure for MND.
“Hopefully we can have a huge celebration of the life of an extraordinary man and a lot of fun through January into February with a few the daft things that are all lined up for us to do,” Wainwright concluded.
You can sign up for Doddie Aid via this link.
Read next: There She Rows aiming to inspire women and girls to conquer their own ‘Atlantic Ocean’