SHAKERS' fans may be well chuffed to see Ian Lawson back at Gigg Lane, but that's nothing compared to the striker's delight at his return.

"Lawse" put pen to paper on a two-year contract on Wednesday morning to end a miserable 18 months at Stockport County.

Offloaded to Edgeley Park for £150,000 in February 2000 -- a consequence of the Shakers' grim financial situation -- his time away from Gigg was a nightmare one for him.

Injured and out-of-favour for much of this time at the Cheshire club, he started only 14 games for the Hatters, spent much of his time rotting in the reserves and, latterly, training with the youth team.

But the Huddersfield-born striker has made no secret of the fact that he wanted to get back to Gigg where he made a fantastic start to his Bury career after being snapped up on a free by Neil Warnock.

"I'm absolutely over the moon to be back," said Lawson. "Things didn't work out as planned at Stockport and this is the only club I wanted to go to.

"Bury's result was always the first I would look for and I hope to start back from where I left off.

"I had a great time while I was here last time and the supporters were brilliant to me, I've always kept in touch with Andy Preece and it will be great to work with him again."

And Lawson believes the Shakers lowly league position will soon be a thing of the past.

"I've seen a few of the games this season and we've been unlucky but with a couple of wins under our belts we'll soon start moving up the table."

Those goal-starved fans will also be hoping the 23-year-old carries on the rich goalscoring form he showed in his previous spell at Gigg.

In 26 starts he scored 11 goals including a superb hat-trick in a 5-2 routing of Colchester United.

And Lawson made a big claim for a rapid return to Shakers first team action by bagging both goals in the reserves 2-1 victory at Shrewsbury on Wednesday. A win that puts them top of the Avon Assurance League Division One table.