Gamble that may have double payout

Having played less than 50 first-team games in over five years away, Jim Crawford returned to Dublin last summer hoping to finally nail down a regular place in some club's starting line-up. The American-born midfielder had three clubs to choose from and with Dermot Keely making it clear there would be no guarantees at Tolka Park, choosing Shelbourne looked like a bit of a gamble.

Now, with the club sitting at the top of the Premier Division and looking forward to kicking off their latest cup campaign on Sunday, Crawford has no doubts. "I took the right option," he says.

If there was an element of luck about the way things have worked out for Crawford in Drumcondra then it's pretty much the first time he and good fortune have crossed paths since he left Dalymount Park for Newcastle in early 1995.

The English club paid what was, by Irish standards, a decent fee for the then 21-year-old but he never really got any sort of look-in with the first team and even his chance to play regular reserve-team football was curtailed by Kevin Keegan's decision to scrap the team to protect the St James' Park pitch.

Crawford promptly went on loan to Rotherham. Another loan spell, this time at Dundee United, followed but it wasn't until Tommy Burns took over at Reading and offered £50,000 that his career finally looked set to turn the corner.

After a moderate first season at Berkshire things began to unravel from the start of his second with injuries, a new manager and even some trouble off the pitch. When the close season arrived there were offers of trials at other clubs but no firm offers from outside Ireland and so Crawford, now 27, jumped at the chance to join last season's double winners back at home.

"I knew things had changed back here from the moment I arrived for my first training session," he says. "When I got there the first thing that happened was that somebody handed me a big pile of kit. It was only then that I started to see how things had become much more professional here." Still there were troubles ahead, though. On his first competitive start for the club, against St Patrick's, Crawford pulled a hamstring and on the day he resumed training after recovering he hurt his back. It took almost three months for him to get match fit again but having come off the bench a couple of times the former Bohemians player finally got his chance again in the second game of the season against Pat Dolan's side. Half a dozen games and a couple of goals later, he's scarcely had time to look back.

"I've enjoyed the last few games," he says. "I like getting stuck in the middle of the field and I always feel that I'll get a few goals. The lads I've been playing along side are top class too and it's been nice to be back playing with Pat Fenlon who was at Bohs at the same time I was."

On the face of it there might be a suspicion the success enjoyed by the team over the past few seasons would have taken the edge off their appetite for Harp Lager FAI Cup ties like Sunday's potentially tricky one with Tolka Park old boy Bobby Browne's Monaghan United. But Crawford insists the professionalism at Shelbourne, in particular the way Dermot Keely and Alan Matthews prepare their players for games, makes it "easy to treat each game in exactly the same way". After so long on the sidelines he finds it easier than most. As he is quick to point out "the lads might have won the double last year but I want to do it now".