MOORE THAN READY TO TAKE THE REINS

MICKY MOORE says he just had to throw his hat into the ring for the Barrow job – and now he’s been confirmed permanently he thinks the stability will help the Bluebirds’ league quest.

Moore, who started the season as assistant manager, has been in interim charge since Paul Cox resigned in August.

The former Solihull Borough and Stratford Town boss says a return to a No.1 job wasn’t on his mind until the opportunity came up.

Over the last seven years he’s been a No.2 to Bob Faulkner at Solihull Moors, where he took charge during the late boss’ chemotherapy, had two spells alongside Cox at Mansfield, assisted Kevin Wilkin at Nuneaton and Marcus Bignot at both Moors and Grimsby Town.

But now he’s ready to lead a club that has future ambitions to reach the Football League after signing a two-and-a-half year deal.

“Because I’ve been an assistant now for the last seven seasons between League Two and the Conference, I’ve got my head around being an assistant,” Moore told The

NLP. “So being a manager wasn’t something I was searching for.

“But when the opportunity arose here at Barrow, I thought, ‘Get back into it’. It’s a good club. A very ambitious chairman (Paul Casson), I think everyone knows that.

“He’s made no secret of where he wants to take the football and club and I just felt it was too good an opportunity for me not to try and grasp.

“This is their third season back at Step 1 following promotion. My contract is what it is because it’s alright building a team, but I’d like to help build an infrastructure so if the club was ever in a position where it got into the play-offs or won a league, it would be in place to go into League Two.

“At the moment it’s probably like a lot of clubs that have come up from the National League North into this league where it’s got a manager, assistant manager, a scout and a physio. So there’s lots of things I would like to implement whether that’s for short term or medium term.

“In terms of short term I’d like to go a week without getting any injuries! We’ve got six or seven injuries – five are to players you would probably call starters.

“Anybody would struggle with losing that volume of players. Hopefully we’re getting our bad luck in one go, we can get a clean bill of health and kick on.”

Moore took his charge of his seventh Barrow game of the season at Sutton United yesterday and he’s hoping now his appointment is official, they can push forward.

“Now we can get a bit of normality in terms of the players know who’s going to be manager, they know what’s going on and we can crack on with what we all want to do which is win games of football and move up the table,” Moore said.