00:00Yeah, so my name's Ian Barr, past president of Scottish Rugby Union, and a former rugby player here with the Doddies Grand Slam team.
00:10And we are here to hopefully raise some funds for the global fight against MND.
00:17I'm a co-captain of this team with Rob Boynes from Wales.
00:21So we've got team members from Wales, England, Scotland, and we've even got a Spanish Welshman, which is a strange combination.
00:28But yeah, we've been delighted to come over here to tie in with the rugby.
00:33And we're also tying in with Fight MND Australia, and we're working in collaboration.
00:39Doddy Weir was an ex-Scotland and British Lion rugby union player and a farmer, so I knew his family, quite lucky.
00:46And Doddy was a true inspirational character back in the UK about trying to find a cure for MND.
00:52He wasn't going to lie down to the illness.
00:54He was determined that he was going to help move technology forward by raising valuable funds to try and find a cure.
01:01And we were absolutely delighted when we got put in touch with Paul Bruce and Paul Ansell.
01:08And we discovered that Fight MND in Australia, Neil Danaher, what an inspirational guy, and a lot of similarities between the two.
01:15So many countries in the world that are struggling with MND, but Doddy Weir, his foundation, who we're riding in Adolf, they've raised around 20 million UK pounds over the last six or seven years.
01:30Our team alone have probably raised around 700,000 pounds.
01:35And then we met up with the guys over here.
01:37And one thing about Doddy Weir, he always said that we need to work together.
01:43You know, there's no point in scientists working away in the UK or in Europe in isolation.
01:48So we needed to be a bit more clever about the money that was invested.
01:52So when the opportunity arose and we learned so much about Neil Danaher and the good work that was going on over here,
01:58another inspirational character, we put the two foundations together, got them talking, and we're just doing the hard yards on the road.
