MICHAEL Duff is ready to answer manager Brian Laws’ call if Clarke Carlisle’s red card appeal is unsuccessful.

Burnley risk losing their central defender for a maximum of four games if a bid to overturn Saturday’s sending off at Millwall is deemed frivolous by the Football Association disciplinary panel.

If that’s the case, Duff would be in line to reclaim the place he lost to Carlisle, through a calf injury, on the opening day of the season.

And while the long-serving stopper would be full of sympathy for his team-mate, he believes it highlights the dog-eat-dog nature of the competition within the Clarets’ squad, and it’s an opportunity he wouldn’t want to miss after two months on the sidelines.

“It was a bit of a surprise (to play on Saturday), but this is what you’ve been waiting for, Clarkey had taken his opportunity well after I got injured, and this is what the squad and competition is all about,” said the 32-year-old, who came on for midfielder Dean Marney following Carlisle’s seventh-minute dismissal.

“Hopefully I’ve come in and done alright, and that’s Clarkey’s problem now. He could be suspended for (four) games, and hopefully I’ll get in the team and kick on from there. It’s disappointing it’s at someone else’s misfortune, but that happened to me in the first place.”

Duff was ruled out for a month after limping off less than half an hour into the first game against Nottingham Forest.

He made his comeback in the reserves four weeks later, but with Carlisle and Andre Bikey forming a formidable central defensive partnership, culminating in four consecutive clean sheets from six in total, he found it difficult to force his way back into the side until the Clarets suffered a defensive double whammy on Saturday.

A lack of match action took its toll on Duff and Leon Cort, who played his first league game of the season after replacing injured centre half Bikey on 14 minutes, as they both suffered with cramp in the latter stages at The Den, where Millwall applied strong second-half pressure.

“It’s one of those things, we haven’t had much football and there’s not been a lot of reserve team games,” said Duff.

“It’s hard to keep your fitness, and with the type of game it was, with a lot of jumping and heading, we both suffered with cramp.

“I managed five more minutes than Corty, but it’s a horrible thing, at one point I didn’t think I was going to be able to go back on, but it seemed to go away.”

Although Burnley missed out on achieving five back-to-back clean sheets for the first time since March 1992, after Scott Barron cancelled out Jay Rodriguez’s 22nd minute opener, Duff admitted the players were pleased they stopped Millwall capitalising further on their one-man advantage.

“We’re a little bit disappointed because we were 1-0 up, but going down to 10 men so early in the game, if you had offered us a point then, we would have taken it,” said the Northern Ireland international.

“They hit the bar and post, but I think we earned our luck, everyone dug in, and it was a dogged, hard-working performance, which is what you need at places like that.”

And Duff believes Burnley have shown they are up for the fight this season.

“We’d love to play pretty football every game, but teams aren’t going to let you do that. We know what our strengths are, but we rolled our sleeves up and dug in, and every point is a valuable point in this league,” he continued.

“Come the end of the season, we might look back on this point as one which helped us get promoted.

“But we did the same at Ipswich, earned a point with 10 men.

“We’re not helping ourselves with the red cards, but we have more than enough ability, and if we keep turning in performances like that, I don’t think too much of an issue should be made of it.”