Laying down the Laws!

By Lee Ryder on Aug 19, 09 03:41 PM

Make no mistake - Brian Laws will have his players ready for a war tonight at St James's Park when he brings Sheff Wed to Tyneside.

While many teams will be heading to St James's Park and looking forward to their "cup final", the tired cliche that is going to follow us around all season, Laws - who is the Football League's Mr Motivator - will want his players to sweat blood for the cause.

Speaking from experience, Laws doesn't take anything lightly when it comes to his football clubs.

Back in his Scunthorpe days when I covered the Iron for the Scunthorpe Telegraph, Laws was always keen to give the local community and the media a taste of life behind the scenes.

It seems a world away from the wall of silence at St James's Park where even the simple things seem so difficult for the current regime.

Laws was happy to allow the media to train with his team back in those days and he also made sure that his players kept their feet well and truly on the ground.

After being put through my paces in a training session other highlights of a crazy two year stint at Glanford Park included another day when Laws ordered his team to head to Scunthorpe's steelworks to make sure his players knew what "real work" was.

Another memory of Laws was when he spotted a Scunny fan who had ran out of petrol on the way back from Oxford and he made sure he pulled over to get the fans home who had supported his team that day.

Laws was quick to bring players back down to earth too and once ordered one of his loan players (who he felt was taking the mick out of the club) to hand back the club tracksuit he was wearing when his loan stint finished - he ended up driving back home in his underpants!

It also struck home this week just how big the gulf was between Laws' principles in football and what we have at Newcastle United right now.

It might have been a different division and Scunthorpe are arguably a much smaller club than Newcastle but no sooner had the ink dried when it came to new signings, the phone would ring and Laws would say: "Get down here, we've signed a player and want to tell the fans all about him."

This week Newcastle took the unusual step of blocking all Press interviews for new signing Danny Simpson - their only summer signing.

It is a million miles away but tonight the Championship will provide Laws and Newcastle with the ultimate leveller.