Sunday was just the latest in an increasingly long line of good days for Cork City. Shamrock Rovers, the latest in a growing list of clubs that have arrived at Turner's Cross full of hope, left for home empty-handed.

It was a convincing win for the home team, especially after they conceding a goal so early in the game. The highlight, undoubtedly, for the 4,500 to 5,000 at the game was the return of striker Pat Morley, whose arrival as a second half substitute was greeted with a standing ovation.

Morley's return home is popular with the local support and fits in perfectly with the plan, put in place by the newly-installed board a couple of years ago, to rebuild the then troubled club around locally-born and locally-based talent.

Huge strides have been made in implementing the policy. Dave Barry and Liam Murphy have assembled a first-team squad that is predominantly made up of players from the area, while behind the scenes structures have been put in place to ensure that the south's most promising talent is drawn into City's youth development machine.

Now, just a couple of years after the club had to be saved from financial collapse, the city's football supporters has a team they can genuinely call their own. While City lead the Premier Division, their reserves are top of the Munster Senior League and the Youths top their league, too. The future, as well as the present, is bright,

"It's going well so far, all right," said club chairman Terry Dunne in the aftermath of the win over Rovers. "And I think that if we can stick to what we've been doing since we took over, we can be reasonably confident about the future."

Dunne, who as a Dub living in Kerry can hardly depend on the affection of the more partisan City supporters, has nevertheless become a popular figure amongst fans who are not slow to realise that they are on to a good thing.

The supermarket executive got involved not because of any life-long love for City, but because he had long felt an inclination to get involved with "a football club at some stage and Noel O'Mahony asked me to get involved with Cork". Money was required initially, he says, but unlike Shamrock Rovers, where Joe Colwell has already shown himself to be a man with very deep pockets, "between the five or six of us who came on board it (the money) wasn't all that much".

Happily, the club now operates comfortably in the black and is in a position to tackle what has more than once been a near fatal issue for the city's senior clubs - their ground.

When Bishoptown was abandoned, the Munster FA came to the rescue with Turner's Cross, and initially the club was anxious to secure its long-term future by purchasing the ground. That idea has been shelved but, says Dunne, "we'll be sitting down in the near future to talk with the Munster FA about the further development of the facilities".

The proposed installation of lights and the addition of around 3,000 seats behind the goal at the St Anne's end are likely to be high on the agenda, while seating and covering on the opposite side of the ground from the main stand could bring the total number of seats above the 5,000 mark.

"I think we'll leave the Shed the way it is," says Dunne with a hint of a chuckle. Some things, he knows, are better not tinkered with.

The current success, Dunne hopes, will help attract more good players to the club.

"Initially the target was to build a squad capable of challenging for the league, and we feel with 21 or 22 quality players there now, we have that. If we can bring one or two local youngsters through each season, there's no reason why we can't keep on producing strong teams."