Duff fighting fitness battle for Republic

Damien Duff is "making progress" in his attempt to be fit for the Republic of Ireland's Euro 2004 qualifier at home to Georgia tomorrow. The Blackburn winger, who limped out of Saturday's victory over Albania at Lansdowne Road with a knee injury, was unable to train yesterday, but the knee has improved since Sunday.

Chris Hughton, Ireland's assistant manager, said yesterday: "All we are looking for is an improvement from day to day and he has improved since yesterday. He is quite bright in himself and we need to keep monitoring it, but he is making progress.

"We shall look at it again tomorrow but certainly there has been an improvement. I won't talk about his chances in terms of percentages because that kind of thing comes back to hit you in the face, but we hope the improvement continues through to Wednesday evening. Damien didn't train today and the ideal scenario is that you would want him to do some type of training before the game, whether it be light or something more, but this is one we have got to gauge as time goes on."

Having completed the first half of the double header by beating Albania 2-1, Hughton said management had been impressing upon the players how difficult it would be to follow up with a win against Georgia, who are bottom of the table.

"First and foremost, the thing you have to drive home to the players is the difficulty of the game," Hughton said. "When we played the two away games in Georgia and Albania, my perception was that Georgia were the better of the two teams.

"They have a lot of quality in the side and if we look at their players who play worldwide, then they are playing at a higher level than a lot of the Albanian players, which is testament to the quality of their side.

"On any given day, if we weren't to do our job right, then they could gain in confidence and be a very efficient outfit. If I look at all the qualifying groups, then this is the tightest group."

The Georgians appear to offer a sterner test than the Albanians. Their squad includes the defender Kakhi Kaladze, who played in the Champions' League final for Milan, earning a winner's medal, plus the Rangers striker Shota Arveladze and the Dundee defender Zurab Khizanishvili.