The FAI have finally been successful in their prolonged battle to purchase Cork City's former ground Bishopstown from the liquidator of Decvale Ltd who had originally agreed to sell the stadium to Bord na gCon. The association was forced into High Court action to prevent the completion of that sale and last week it was decided that sealed bids would be invited from interested parties yesterday.

In the end a bid of £501,000 was enough to secure the ground for the FAI which had already invested considerable amounts of money in its development over the past five years.

The stadium will now be used as a coaching and development centre for the Cork area while it is planned to allow a local junior side to use the pitch for home games.

"While we're very pleased to have secured the ground for the benefit of youth and schoolboy development in the greater Cork area," said general secretary Bernard O'Byrne yesterday, "we are very annoyed that we were forced into a bidding situation against a semi-State body which had huge resources at its disposal. "Surely," he continued Bord na gCon could have spent their millions elsewhere in Cork and allowed us to cater for the youth of the area with some of the funds which we now have had to spend in acquiring the ground."

Sligo Rovers, meanwhile, are currently giving trials to a Polish goalkeeper and a Dutch defender as caretaker manager Chris Rutherford seeks to make the first moves towards building a squad for the new season.

The club currently have around 10 players signed for the approaching campaign and a decision on whether to add either Gdansk born Dariuz Gladiz or Peter Cobussen, who played last season for Telstar of the Dutch first division, will probably be made by the end of the week.

"We still need to add a good few players and these two may help us to get there but we're not panicking quite yet, we've been in the position of having to start from scratch at the start of a season a couple of times in recent years so we'll take our time about getting things together over the next few weeks," said Rutherford last night.