MICKY Moore hailed a ‘fantastic opportunity’ as his interim tenure as Barrow AFC boss was made permanent.

The 43-year-old was appointed to take over the reins on a two-and-a-half-year contract, having taken charge for the past six games in a caretaker role.

Moore will lead the side for the first time as permanent boss at Sutton United on Saturday, and is pleased the club have shown faith in his ability to lead the team forward – with the ultimate ambition of reaching the Football League.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for me,” said Moore, who oversaw one win, three draws and two defeats during his stint as caretaker after the shock resignation of Paul Cox on August 24. “It’s a very proud moment for myself that the club have entrusted me with the job in terms of my vision and where I would like to take the club and how I would like to move it forward.

“It’s a big thank you to the chairman and the board of directors for their belief in me.”

Moore’s immediate aims will be to add strength to the squad, after suffering a string of injuries during his short tenure to date.

Dave Nieskens (knee), Thierry Audel (broken arm), Moussa Diarra, Adi Yussuf and Jack Barthram (all hamstring) are all sidelined as the Bluebirds prepare for the weekend’s trip to Sutton.

Beyond that, he is aware that AFC owner Paul Casson has ambitions to take the club back to the Football League for the first time since 1972, and hopes to turn those dreams into reality.

Asked what his goals were now he had the job on a permanent basis, he said: “In the short-term, to have no injuries please!

“You want to look to the short-term, medium-term and the long-term. The ultimate aim is to achieve what the chairman set out to achieve when he first came to the football club, which is the Football League. That will be the ultimate aim during my tenure, to be able to do that.

“That’s his vision and I want to try to strive to achieve that in my tenure here. That’s got to be the ultimate goal.”

He added: “We need to look at the infrastructure. When I say the infrastructure, you look at the first-team staff and you have a physio, a first-team manager, an assistant manager and Paul Ogden.

“The way the world of football is now, we need to look at getting the best for the players and putting an infrastructure in place with sports science, with more scouting.

“Paul Ogden does an unbelievable job, and you look at the players who have come in, but he is a one-man band.

“We need to have more bodies out there trying to find us some gems.

“The average age of our squad is 24. We want to get that balance right in terms of bringing good, young players in, developing them, and having them help us achieve our end goal or having us help them move on.

“We’re just looking at the infrastructure in terms of how we can make that better.

“I’ve had lots of long chats with Andrew on that, and that’s something he is interested in hearing from me in terms of how we can do it and what I would like to do with that.”