SOCCER: For a man with lingering doubts about the fitness of half his midfield as the biggest game of his managerial career lurks just around the corner, Brian Kerr was in good spirits yesterday as he reflected on developments elsewhere in this tightest of World Cup qualification groups.Soccer Correspondent

If there is anything at all to the standard gags regarding Damien Duff's favourite pastime away from the football field then Kerr's staff must be maintaining something of a bedside vigil for the 26- year-old. Duff has ample opportunity to nap just now given that a knee injury sustained at Chelsea last week has left him unable to join in the Irish squad sessions over the past couple of days.

The winger did no more than walk on the joint yesterday and while Kerr said that Duff had been positive about his own prospects of starting on Wednesday, he remains "a concern" for the moment.

Both Kevin Kilbane and Matt Holland enjoy the same unenviable status just now. Kilbane started feeling ill on Friday and Holland is still struggling to shake off the effects of a rib injury.

Kerr said that the Everton midfielder felt better yesterday morning while Holland did just enough running yesterday to maintain his hopes of featuring against the French.

Both are potentially important contributors to Wednesday's game but Duff's fitness is clearly the greatest worry within the Irish camp. It is hard to envisage how the Irish will beat their qualification rivals at Lansdowne Road without the important contribution from the wide man.

Robbie Keane's role will be crucial too and Kerr dismissed media reports of excessive drinking by the striker and other members of the squad on Friday night, insisting that he had had no problems with the players having a late night out five nights before the game.

Kerr, as it happens, was in Lens on Saturday putting the finishing touches to his own blueprint for victory. Having witnessed Raymond Domenech's side comfortably beat the Faroe Islands but by what turned out to be a rather modest margin, he said he was happy with the outcome of both that game and the one in Basel where Switzerland produced perhaps their poorest display of the campaign to date against a determined as ever Israel.

"My thoughts going in to watch the France game were that six goals or less for them wouldn't be too bad," observed the Ireland manager. "And when they got the two goals early on I thought they might go on and win it by quite a margin but the Faroe Islands showed their usual ability to hang in there.

"I was happy with the way the other game turned out," he added. "The only better result would have been if it had been a no-score draw. As it is, three teams have 13 points and we've scored more goals than the French having played all the same teams."

The Lens match was, he said, his first opportunity to see the "new old crew," but it provided no great surprises as the French ground out the win they needed.

Asked about the suggestions that problems remain within the French camp and, in particular, to Thierry Henry's obvious displeasure with Domenech after being replaced, Kerr insisted that it was impossible to know what precisely is going on within the opposition's camp.

He had not, he said, seen the Henry incident from where he was sitting but, he laughed, "maybe the psychology is that if they all look grumpy at the same time they'll perform well together."

He conceded that the return of Zinedine Zidane, in particular, would have to be taken into account when he decides on his approach to Wednesday's game. "I can't say that it won't affect us when you put somebody like Zidane back into the team. It's a big change for them to go back to building things around him after playing with a shape that was very clear and disciplined.

"We have to take that into account, it's not like we can just go out there and play off the cuff because they've got brilliant players, one or two of them would be up there in the top five in the world. But then we've got to do our own thing too, to play our own game and we have to do that to the very best of our ability . . . nothing less will do."