Damien Duff

is hoping for even a few minutes of football when

Shamrock Rovers

take on Cork City this evening in Tallaght where both sides could do with winning in order to keep their respective ambitions alive.

The former Ireland international refuses to give up on Rovers playing their way back into the title race.

But for the moment they need to keep pace with St Patrick's Athletic and City if their hopes of being back in Europe next season are not to crumble, while City urgently need to bounce back from Friday's surprise defeat to Limerick.

"Yeah, I think I could be ready for one or two minutes or so," says Duff, whose wages and bonuses are being split evenly between Temple Street hospital and the charity, Heart Children Ireland, with a smile.

“We’ll see. Listen, I feel good in training but I’ve trained only three times in seven months which is a bit risky so we’ll leave it to the manager and see how it goes.

Challenging

“The club’s more important than me,” he continues. “And from the club’s point of view being in Europe [is a priority]. But we want to be in challenging every year and me, personally, I’d love to finish my career [off by] winning the league here at Shamrock Rovers.

“Like I said, they’re the biggest club so they should be challenging every year and listen, it’s not over this season, I know we’ve given ourselves an uphill task but if you win every game you’ll be there or there abouts.”

The same might still be said for Ireland but Duff doesn’t sound optimistic about the national team’s chances of getting to France at this stage. He will, he says, be back at the Aviva Stadium in autumn “if it’s hotting up and there’s a chance of us qualifying [but that’s] slim at the minute. You can be as positive as you want but I don’t think it’s looking great . . .”

The start of the team’s decline, he suggests, helped to make his own mind up to depart in 2012. “It just felt right, even on the pitch,” he recalls. “Ireland now, I don’t think we have possession in a lot of the games, 30-35 [per cent] if even, so maybe not getting a lot of the ball, just defending, playing as a double right back, stuff like that . . .

Felt right

“I think I knew already but after the third game [in Poland] I said: ‘Yeah, I’ll see you later.’ It just felt right and I’ve never regretted it.”

Aside from having Duff edging towards full-match fitness, Pat Fenlon has Patrick Cregg available for City's visit this evening but Stephen McPhail is still sidelined.

St Patrick's Athletic head to Dundalk, meanwhile, looking for a 10th straight league victory without either Killian Brennan or Morgan Langley, both of whom are suspended but Ger O'Brien, Ian Bermingham and Kenny Browne are all expected to come back into contention.

The league leaders should be at pretty full strength again but recently arrived striker Ciaran Kilduff may not feature against his former club.