Lewis Moody, the former England rugby captain and 2003 World Cup winner, has been diagnosed with ALS, also known as motor neurone disease.<\/p>\n
The 47-year-old Moody said he had \u201ca bit of muscle wasting in the hand and the shoulder\u201d but described them as \u201cminor symptoms\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel fit and well in myself and I\u2019m focused on staying positive, living life and dealing with the changes I will experience as they come,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Moody was given the diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something about looking the future in the face and not wanting to really process that at the minute,\u201d he said in an interview with the BBC. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t understand where it\u2019s going. We understand that. But there is absolutely a reluctance to look the future in the face for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow rugby player Doddie Weir and rugby league star Rob Burrow have died from the illness in recent years, with rugby embracing a high-profile fundraising campaign to tackle it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Moody, the former England rugby captain and 2003 World Cup winner, has been diagnosed with ALS, also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[9938,64,63,122034,1576,122028,1378,122030,1208,122031,39694,122032,121960,100758,122033,760,122029,85],"class_list":["post-193211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-als","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bath-rugby","tag-bbc","tag-bill-sweeney","tag-british-and-irish-lions","tag-doddie-weir","tag-england","tag-geordan-murphy","tag-leicester-tigers","tag-leon-lloyd","tag-lewis-moody","tag-mnd","tag-rob-burrow","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-football-union","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}