BRIAN LAWS 

Date and Place of Birth 14th October 1961 - Wallsend   Transfers to and from Burnley youth from summer 1978 to Huddersfield Town - August 1983 (£50,000)   First and Last Burnley Games Watford (a) - 3rd May 1980   Grimsby Town (h) - 7th May 1983   Other Clubs ---------------------------------------- Huddersfield Town, Middlesbrough, Nottingham Forest, Grimsby Town

Burnley Career Stats

Profile by Tony Scholes

The last day of the 1979/80 season. It hadn't been a good season for Burnley and we'd been relegated three weeks earlier. This end of the season game at Watford was to signal our departure from the old second division as we plummeted into the third tier of English football for the first time.

Derek Scott and Tony Arins had shared the right back duties over the season, and Arins had played in the two previous games. However, he was about to be released and so manager Brian Miller gave a debut to the 18-year-old reserve team right back Brian Laws.

It was some start, in a much changed team he didn't have the best of debuts in a team performance that reflected the whole season as we went down 4-0 to Graham Taylor's team.

If the young Laws thought he'd made it in the first team he was mistaken. During the close season we brought in experienced right back Ian Wood from Oldham and so after that one inglorious debut he was back in the reserves at the start of the following season with what appeared little prospect of winning a first team place.

Wood was in the side for the first three league games at the start of the 1980/81 season but for the fourth, at Charlton on 30^th August Laws got his chance. It was another defeat down south, this time just 2-0, but there was to be no disappearing act this time for the Wallsend born youngster.

In March that season he missed the 3-2 defeat at Barnsley but other than that he was a fixture in the team as the much changing Burnley team finished eighth in the league. He even found time to score a couple of goals. His first was the first in a 2-0 win at Fulham and then he got the third in an easy 4-1 home win over Blackpool over Christmas.

By the end of the season he was one of the most popular players in the side and the best was yet to come from him. We made an absolutely shocking start to the 1981/82 season and, along with everyone else in the side, he must have been concerned about his place as we collected just four points from the first eight games.

Then came an inspired change to the team with captain Martin Dobson moved into the sweeper position and he, along with goalkeeper Alan Stevenson, provided the experience for a back four that was made up entirely of teenagers.

Laws flourished. We went twenty games without defeat and after losing six of the first eight games only lost twice more all season. Laws only missed two games. With licence to get forward he even netted six league goals although two of them were from the spot.

He scored the last goal of the 4-1 win at Southend on that wonderful Friday night as we clinched promotion in the club's centenary season. His performances were recognised and in the very first Supporters' Club Awards he won the Young Player of the Year prize, just months after his twentieth birthday.

The following season proved to be a disappointment in what was one of the strangest seasons I've ever seen watching Burnley. We reached the semi-finals of the League Cup and the last eight of the FA Cup but found ourselves relegated back to the third division.

Laws didn't have the best of seasons. No longer with the protection of a sweeper he was often exposed and struggled as the team did. He played in the home draw with Grimsby on 7^th May but missed the last three games with the next youngster Lee Dixon getting into the team. That game against Grimsby proved to be his last game in Burnley colours.

The summer saw the club change direction with the appointment of manager John Bond. Laws appeared to have some problems during the Isle of Man Tournament and came home to turn in a ghastly performance at Preston in the Lancashire Cup. It was clear things weren't right and just after the start of the season he was sold to Huddersfield, who were managed by former Claret Mick Buxton, for £50,000.

It was the start of a few difficult years for Laws. His stay at Leeds Road was less than two years when he signed for Middlesbrough for £30,000, not much more than half of what we'd received for him.

Life at Middlesbrough wasn't good, such was the situation there that at one point they were even locked out of the ground. But they turned things round and won two promotions and Laws' contribution to that prompted Brian Clough to pay £120,000 to take him to Nottingham Forest.

He didn't get into the first team immediately but once he did then he had the most successful period of his playing career. He made two Wembley appearances in his first season picking up winners medals in the Simod Cup and the Littlewoods (League) Cup.

He was in the Forest side on that awful day at Hillsborough in 1989 for the FA Cup Semi-Final and had the misfortune to put through his own goal when the game was replayed. He won yet another Littlewoods Cup in 1990 and made one more appearance at Wembley in the following season, this time as a substitute in the FA Cup Final defeat to Spurs.

Forest were relegated from the Premier League at the end of its inaugural 1992/93 season and this proved to be his last as a regular member of the side. They were back a year later but he'd hardly featured and in November 1994 he joined Grimsby as player/manager.

His time there will perhaps be best remember for the chicken sandwich incident in the dressing room when he injured a player throwing a plate of them at him, and he was no stranger to controversy when he moved to Scunthorpe and had an altercation with Steve Guinan who was on loan from Forest.

But, in two spells at Scunthorpe, he had some success. He brought them into what is now League One on two occasions and in the 2006/07 season they were riding high in the league when he was tempted by an offer to manager Sheffield Wednesday.

They had a decent end to the season but 2007/08 saw them have a nightmare start. The ground was flooded during the summer and then they lost their first six games. His job appeared to be in some jeopardy but he survived. In November 2007 he could so easily have been on the way back to Turf Moor as manager. We made an approach for him but were refused permission to speak to him.

He happily stayed and they escaped the drop, and just before the start of the 2008/09 he faced a personal battle, a fear of heights, when he agreed to do a parachute jump to raise money for the children's hospital in Sheffield. And then he got the season underway with a 4-1 win over the Clarets.

December 2009 saw his time at Sheffield Wednesday come to an end when he was relieved of his duties as they struggled in the bottom half of the Championship. Remarkably he was out of work for just a few weeks when he got the call to the Premier League and a return to Burnley. He was never accepted by the Burnley fans and he found it a struggle, lasting just over 11 months before again being sacked. He'd been popular as a player but that popularity was never bestowed on him as a manager at Turf Moor.