Melbourne skipper Max Gawn has relayed a warm message to Jai Arrow following his immediate retirement due to a motor neuron disease diagnosis.

Arrow retired from the NRL at age 30 and has had wholehearted support thrown behind him from one of the bigger figures in the Australian football code.

Gawn is heavily linked to the fightMND initiative, which was co-founded by former AFL player and good friend Neale Daniher, who passed away from the disease in May.

Daniher passed away following a 13-year battle with MND, spreading awareness and helped raise millions of dollars to go towards researching for a cure.

“I have seen the news. Unfortunately, any sort of news around MND is never good,” Gawn said to Nine.com.au.

“And when you see the headline, ‘NRL player retires due to MND diagnosis', and then you hear the speech that's already gone away, you just go back to the work that Neale's done and how important it is … I heard Garry Lyon speak during the week. One of Neale's quotes was “fight on”. Now it's our chance to fight on.

“We all thought, ‘what's going to happen when Neale's no longer with us? What's going to happen to FightMND? What's going to happen to the Big Freeze'? But what's going to happen is we're going to keep it going. 

“We have to, because that was the message that got sold to us by a guy who beat a life expectancy by 10 years. And now we've got another guy (Arrow) who's not in the AFL, but in Australian sport, so you feel like he's one of us that's now suffering from the disease and it's another chance to get behind someone in need.” 

Gawn, along with Melbourne, has contributed greatly to the FightMND cause, and on Monday night will face the Collingwood Magpies in the FreezeMND fixture to raise money and awareness.

It sees the initiative fundraise merch including beanies, caps, and socks as part of the Big Freeze campaign against MND.

Arrow has been widely supported across the NRL community and clubs. It saw him invited into the QLD Maroons camp by Billy Slater in the lead-up to their opening clash against the Blues.

He played 12 games for the Maroons and joined the squad in the final few days in Sydney, heading to team dinners, accompanying the side in the sheds on match day.