Scott Lawson wouldn’t be the first Scotsman to be inspired by Andy Murray, but there is as much empathy as admiration in his view of the tennis star. For when Murray said recently that he wanted to fight back from his injury problems so that his children could see him play, the Newcastle Falcons hooker knew exactly how he felt.
It is getting on for 13 years since Lawson made his international debut against Romania in 2005. He knows that his return to the international squad for the forthcoming Six Nations owes a lot to Scotland’s recent spate of front-row injuries, but adding to his tally of 46 caps would be a particularly special experience as it would provide his own four children, whose ages range from four to nine, with living memories to cherish for all time.
Ava, the youngest, was just a baby when Lawson won his last cap, against Argentina in November 2014. She has seen her old man — and we use that term advisedly — in action for New-castle, but it would mean so much more to him if she got the chance to see him play for Scotland. After many years in England, with Sale, Gloucester and London Irish before he joined New-castle, Scotland and family are his life’s twin passions and he would relish the opportunity to bring them together.
“It would be amazing,” Lawson said with a smile. “As you go through your career your motivations to play change. When you’re younger you are very self-driven, it’s all about you, but as you go on that journey and you acquire family, even as a professional it’s hard work, it takes a lot of sacrifice.
“They used to go to Murrayfield when they were babies. Now they can hopefully go and fully appreciate what a huge achievement it is and really absorb it and be proud. Yeah, it’s another added bonus for me [for them] not only to see me play but hopefully remember it.”
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Since that last Scotland appearance a little over three years ago, Lawson has dropped down the pecking order. However, with Ross Ford, Fraser Brown and George Turner all likely to miss the whole of the Six Nations, he has rocketed back up the rankings, and can probably be considered the first-choice understudy to Stuart McInally, who has been outstanding for Scotland and Edinburgh this season.
Lawson will be 36 years and 130 days old on February 3, the day Scotland get the Six Nations underway when they take on Wales in Cardiff. If he is involved in that match, he will overtake George Graham to become the fourth oldest player to represent Scotland, behind Ian McLauchlan, who had reached 37years and 210 days by the time he won his final cap against New Zealand in 1979, and Jim Aitken and Norrie Rowan.
Front-row players all. As a young man, Lawson was sceptical when he was told that props and hookers all get better with age, but he has come to accept the truth of that maxim.
“When you first come in, people say that as a front row you’ll not be good until you’re in your thirties and you don’t really believe them,” he said. “But the ability to problem solve, to fix things from scrum to scrum, has definitely been one of my main improvements over the last four or five years.”
Nobody who has seen Newcastle this season would doubt Lawson’s claim that he is playing as well as ever. A buzz-bomb ball-carrier, he can skittle defenders out of his way with his trademark breaks through the middle, but his set-piece accuracy is a joy to behold as well. These days, his involvement tends to be off the bench, but even in a 30-minute cameo he raises energy levels.
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That he is still going so strong owes much to the fact he has never stressed about the fact he has gone on so long. “I still enjoy it,” he said. “You see some guys at 30 and they’re mentally done. They don’t enjoy the strains of it, the pressures, the regime.
“It’s not a bad job. It’s the best job in the world, but there are pressures. Some people are built to do it and some aren’t. To keep doing the same thing over and over again and strive to improve and always try to get better — for me, personally, I thrive on that.”
Lawson’s attitude to ageing as a player was shaped in part by a conversation he had with McLauchlan a few years ago. “It was when he was involved with the presidency,” Lawson explained. ‘He had the ultimate respect from all the players because of what he had achieved in the game. His big thing was ‘play as long as you can, enjoy it, you never, never go out of it because you are a long time retired’. I will keep going like that.”