Kevin Sinfield has announced his seventh and final fundraising challenge for motor neurone disease charities, setting up a seven-day run from Hull to Manchester that will finish at the Super League Grand Final on 3 October. The 45-year-old former Leeds Rhinos star said 7 in 7: The Grand Finale will begin on 27 September and cover at least 45km each day.
The route is designed to pull in rugby league crowds as it visits all 12 English Super League grounds, including AMT Headingley, and stretches across Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. For people searching now, the date matters: the challenge has a fixed start and finish, and it lands at one of the sport’s biggest nights, giving the fundraising push a public stage from beginning to end.
Since launching his first challenge in 2020, Sinfield has raised more than £11m for MND causes, money that has gone to charities and foundations across the UK and Ireland. A spokesperson for Leeds Rhinos said the final effort will split funds between six groups: the MND Association, Leeds Hospital Charity, Irish MND Association, the My Name'5 Doddie Foundation, MND Scotland and the Darby Rimmer Foundation.
The run also carries the personal thread that has defined Sinfield’s fundraising career. He was inspired by his former team mate Rob Burrow, who died in June 2024 after living with MND for four-and-a-half years, and Leeds Rhinos said the route would include a poignant pass near Burrow’s home in Pontefract. Sinfield said the people around him have made the work possible, saying his team have done a wonderful job and that he could not have done any of it without them because they are so unselfish in the way they have gone about it.
That sense of progress sits beside the harder truth behind the campaign. Sinfield said the money has gone a long way and the team is getting closer and closer, but added that they still have to keep pushing and try to find a cure. The final challenge will include extra mile events that let people affected by MND join him for a mile each day, but there is no public estimate yet for how much 7 in 7: The Grand Finale will raise before it gets underway on 27 September.
