Soccer: The Blackburn player limped out of Saturday's dramatic 2-1 defeat of Albania in the 86th minute and initial reports suggested that he may have pulled his hamstring, an injury that certainly would have ruled him out of the game.

At the team hotel yesterday, however, Brian Kerr said that an MRI scan has shown "no obvious damage to the hamstring. What there is, though, is soreness and inflammation on the tendon at the back of the knee so we'll have to wait and see how he is but he didn't train today."

Kerr insisted that if Duff does miss the game it would not automatically prompt a return to the 4-4-2 formation abandoned for Saturday's win over the Albanians. "We have played in training with other people in the role occupied by Damien in this game and so we could play that way again. There's a lot of things we could do, though, and we'll make a decision after we consider them all and decide how best to deal with the Georgian team we will be playing against."

Nevertheless, the expectation would be that the Irish would revert to their more familiar look on Wednesday evening with Gary Doherty possibly getting the chance to start up front alongside Robbie Keane.

Kerr added that he feels the Georgians are a stronger side than the Albanian one so narrowly beaten over the weekend. "They have better individual players throughout the team," he said in reference to the likes of Milan's Kakha Kaladze, Shota Arveladze of Rangers and Dundee's Georgi Nemsadze. "One has just picked up a European Cup winners medal with his club and the other two are playing the British sort of game at a high level every week. They have other good players too and they will be a tough test for us."

The team go into the game on something of a high, however, after a weekend which yielded not only a win here in Dublin but also a draw between the Republic's two main Group 10 rivals, Switzerland and Russia in Basle. "I said before the weekend that whatever the result over there was that there would be positive aspects for us," remarked Kerr. "Obviously the fact that neither of them has managed to take three points from the game is good for us in that it has stopped the Swiss from getting clear at the top of the table, although the draw is a good result for the Russians; it brings them right back into it after two defeats and when I was talking to Lou Macari (who watched the game for Kerr) last night he was impressed by them, he said it was a very different team to the one that lost to Georgia and that after being 2-0 down they should have gone on to win the match.

Overall, though, I'm very happy. People were saying we were completely out of it when I took over but after taking four points from the two away games and they are now asking if we can win the group. We've made up four points on the Swiss in the last three games and a good bit of ground on the others too. It looks like a very different situation now."

Steve Finnan, meanwhile, is expected to complete his move from Fulham to Liverpool today with Gerard Houllier having agreed a fee in the region of £4 million for the right sided defender. The 27-year-old made more than 200 appearances for the London club since arriving from Notts County for £200,000. Capped 22 times by the Republic, he has not played competitively for his country since the 4-2 defeat in Moscow because of injuries. He is missing from the current panel because of a groin strain.