Twenty-four thousand miles is a long way to travel for a couple of appearances as a replacement and barely 10 minutes of rugby, so it's probably understandable that Scott Lawson does not recall the last World Cup with any great fondness.

But as anyone who knows the pocket-rocket hooker will testify, the disappointment of New Zealand in 2011 was only ever going to fuel his determination to be part of the tournament in England four years later.

Like so many who have played in his position, there is a feisty competitiveness about Lawson that suggests the best way to get him to do anything is to tell him that he is incapable of pulling it off. Once dismissed as too small to play international rugby, he rose so far above his 5ft 8in stature that he is now just four shy of a half-century of caps. He has also silenced those who said that his remarkable mobility in the loose was at the cost of effectiveness in the set-piece by becoming a superb all-round operator in recent seasons.

Who says so? Only Dean Richards, that great lump of an English forward who probably knows more about rugby at close quarters than anyone else on the planet. "I think Scott is outstanding," says Richards, now Lawson's club coach at Newcastle Falcons. "His work rate is exceptional, his scrummaging is strong and he is incredibly accurate with his throwing in. I've been delighted with him."

And so he should be. When Lawson was signed by the north-east club in 2013, it seemed a classic pre-retirement move. At 31, he was not exactly in his dotage, but he had already played for Glasgow, Sale, Gloucester and London Irish, so it was easy to assume that he was readying himself for a quieter life. As he said at the time, being nearer to his Biggar roots was a significant factor in drawing him to Tyneside. On top of everything else, he appeared to have slipped down the Scotland pecking order, having played no part in that year's Six Nations.

Yet the move to Kingston Park, in tandem with a late call to join Scotland's summer tour to South Africa, re-energised Lawson's game. He has since added 10 caps to his collection, and is in with a strong shout of collecting more over the course of the forthcoming Six Nations and the World Cup.

His frustration in 2011 owed much to the fact that he picked up a calf injury early in the tournament. "I didn't play much and it was a disappointing time," he recalls. "If you get an injury in the pool stages then you're going to struggle. But I've now been to two World Cups [he was also in France in 2007, when he was involved in every match] and I love the preparation and intensity of the whole thing. So I would love to be involved again this year. I still have ambition and I think I'm playing well. It's even more of a home World Cup for me because we'll have a couple of games in Newcastle and it would be fantastic to be part of it."

At his age, it is probably wise not to look beyond the World Cup, but that suggestion brings a quick rebuke. "I'm not looking beyond London Welsh," he says sharply, a reference to today's clash with the Aviva Premiership's basement club at Kingston Park.

It is not so long since the match appeared to be shaping up as a relegation battle, but Lawson and Newcastle have put clear blue water between themselves and the hapless - and still winless - Exiles over the past couple of months. It became clearer and bluer still over the festive period, when the Falcons put in impressively competitive performances against both Saracens and Northampton - respectively third and first in the Premiership table before this weekend's round of games - although they narrowly lost the two games.

London commentators, rarely quick to praise Newcastle, have been gushing over a style of play that saw them collect a four-try bonus against Northampton last weekend. With crowds up by almost 20%, the atmosphere around Kingston Park recalls the title-winning glory days of the 1990s, and Lawson agrees that the excitement is infectious."It has been good to be part of it," he smiles. "You want to have big games like this, you want to be involved."

The recent history of English rugby has established a pattern of yo-yo clubs bouncing between the Premier-ship and second-tier Championship levels, Worcester and London Welsh being the most obvious cases. New- castle could have slipped into becom- ing that kind of side as well, but there is a feeling around the club that they have now consolidated and stabilised. Lawson credits Richards' patience as being the most significant factor in the development.

"A lot of clubs talk about ambition, but it is about having some substance to it," says Lawson. "Dean's got it, he's done it before. He knows it's a three/four/five-year plan; it's not just going to happen in one season.

"For me, rugby-wise, it was a great fit coming here, and it worked out personally as well. I've bought into it and I think I'm playing some of the best rugby I've ever played. I've really enjoyed it. As a club and a squad I think we've acquitted ourselves really well in our games recently. It was a tough year, the first year back up in the Premiership, but we did what had to be done and used the experience of the coaches, and also the experience of some of the players."

Lawson admits that Newcastle's expansive style can partly be credited to the artificial pitch they installed last summer, although he also confesses that it took them time to get used to the thing. Yet as much as he is enjoying the kind of game they are playing, he stresses that it is not all about flinging the ball out to the wings as quickly as possible.

"We are trying to play a certain brand of rugby," he says, "but we still stick to the fundamentals of our game: the scrum, the maul, the line-out drive, attack and defence. We've still got that, we just put a little bit more on it and it seems to be working pretty well."