ALAN MOORE'S prospects of claiming a place in Middlesbrough's FA Cup final squad, were boosted yesterday after he had been cleared to resume full training.

Moore, under treatment since damaging ankle ligaments in the Premiership game against Sunderland on April 19th, is likely to restart training on Monday.

And that gives him an outside chance of beating the deadline to join Bryan Robson's squad for their first FA Cup final appearance against Chelsea at Wembley five days later.

"That's more than I had at the start of the week" he said. "I've been doing some jogging for the last two days and medical opinion is that I should be able to start back into hard work after the weekend."

It also means that Moore may now be a candidate for a place in the Republic of Ireland squad for the World Cup game against Liechtenstein at Lansdowne Road on May 21st. He was on the bench for the game in Macedonia but together with his clubmate, Curtis Fleming, was withdrawn by the club for last week's game in Romania.

Mick McCarthy, who introduced Moore for his first senior cap in Prague just over a year ago, plans to announce his squad for the Liechtenstein game, in Dublin tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, Bray Wanderers' hopes of completing the refurbishing programme at Carlisle Grounds on schedule, were advanced yesterday with a State grant of £100,000.

It will enable then to proceed with the construction of a new clubhouse in addition to completing the terracing on one side of the ground before the end of the year.

Already, the pitch at the Carlisle Grounds, now rated as one of the best in the country, has been realigned: a floodlight system installed and exterior walls rebuilt.

Under the third phase of the programme, an all-weather training pitch will be installed next year and it is planned to have an all-seater stadium operational by the end of the year 2000.

The improvements are in line with a commitment made to Bray Urban and District Council who, in granting a short-term lease of the ground to the FAI last year said that if promises of redevelopment work were implemented, they would be prepared to make the ground available for a longer tenure.

The cheque was handed over by Liz McManus, Minister of State for Housing and the Environment.

. Arklow's top soccer club has for the moment turned down an offer to play in the National League of Ireland in the 1998/9 season. Leinster Senior League side Arklow Town has decided to give the National League a miss for the present after discovering that it would cost them £50,000 a year to field a team.

A spokesman for Arklow Town, who want to continue developing their own facilities at home instead, said that no matter how tempting the offer, it would be financially prohibitive at this time. "We are definitely interested in playing League of Ireland at some time in the future, " he said.