With 15 championship successes to their credit, it was difficult to imagine Shamrock Rovers ever ending up being considered dark horses in the title race here. It happened last year, though, when under new manager Mick Byrne, and with a heavily reshuffled panel of players, Rovers surprised just about everybody - including a good many of their own fans - by performing solidly throughout the league campaign and finishing fourth, just one point behind Cup winners Cork in the final table.

With another few new faces added during the summer, there is growing optimism at the club that last season's modest achievements can be built upon over the months ahead and Tony Cousins, by Rovers' standards a bit of a veteran in the green and white shirt, has made it clear he is confident that the good days are just around the corner by signing a new four-year contract a few weeks ago.

"I've been getting a few people saying to me that they were surprised, they thought I'd move on and there was certainly a good bit of interest from other clubs, but I'm really happy with the way things are going at Rovers now and I'm glad to be part of it all," says the former Dundalk and Bohemians striker.

Joe Colwell's assumption of the top job at the club was, says Cousins, one major factor in his decision to stay on - "he delivers what he promises and I've met a lot of people who just make the promises in football" - while the squad strengthening that has gone on over the last couple of months played a considerable part in making his mind up too.

Terry Palmer, Jason Sherlock and Billy Woods are among the players to sign for Mick Byrne, the sort of names, reckons Cousins, that can turn the club into serious title challengers once again.

"Nobody rated us at all last year," he says. "In fact if you went back to the papers at the start of the season they were all talking about us going down, but we surprised them. Now there's a real feeling that we can win something." While competition for the places around him has certainly increased during the off season, Cousins looks certain to be an automatic starter again this year. Four goals in five competitive games so far have shown that he means to pick up where he left off in the league.

The Dubliner has done well in every competition since arriving from Bohemians two years ago, but it his consistency in the championship that has been most remarkable. Having lost his way at Dalymount Park where a mixture of injuries, the team's style of play and being played out of position all took their toll, the striker, who turned 29 yesterday, hasn't missed a league game since, scoring 31 times in his 66 appearances.

Even that strike rate is fractionally down on his days at Oriel Park where he managed 23 goals in 46 games, but after the disappointment of those final days at Bohemians he's delighted with the way things have gone in his first two seasons at Rovers.

"By the end of my time at Dalymount I just needed a change. During the last season there I played about half of the games that I did start in midfield and I had a good few problems with hamstring injuries. In the end getting away was the best thing that could have happened to me and I think that I've shown again since I came here that when a team plays the sort of football that suits my style I can score goals on a regular basis."

By the look of things he'll be driving the point home again over the next few months starting, he hopes, with Friday's game against Shelbourne in Tolka. "It's a great way to start," he says "everybody'll be up for it and I'm really looking forward to getting going again."

As it happens, Friday's game is an away match for Rovers, but Cousins insists that the ongoing problems with Rovers's move to Tallaght haven't dulled his enthusiasm for the club in any way. The club, he insists, is in the strongest position that it has ever been over the past decade and things are going to continue improving for the next couple of seasons.

"Of course it would be nice for us to have our own home, I'm not saying that it wouldn't be, but that'll come and in the meantime you couldn't ask for a better ground to play your football in than Tolka Park.

"Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, any player who starts moaning about what is going on off the pitch at a club is only looking for excuses. It's like any other sort of job, what goes on upstairs shouldn't affect how you do your job. I'm paid to play football and so I just look to get on with that."

He is, he admits, still "a half a yard short" of fitness just now having picked up a minor knock in the friendly against Tranmere Rovers, but some extra training sessions this week should help to sort the problem out in time for Friday when he'll head out to do what's he paid to and it's a case of defenders beware.