Centre O'Driscoll believes the England squad have more than enough strength in depth to cope with their loss, while O'Sullivan has his own injury problems to worry about.

"Theres been talk about players being missing like Grewcock, Johnson and Wilkinson but weve a similar situation with Donncha OCallaghan out, Geordan Murphy missing and Keith Wood retired so it all evens up at the end of the day.

In the age of professional sport you just play the hand youre dealt and sometimes when youre not dealt a great hand it is a great motivation, he said.

ODriscoll reiterated OSullivans view and added: Any side without Jonny Wilkinson has got to be a weakened side and Martin Johnson was huge for England over the last few years and a leader by example but they were certainly not a two-man team.

There are other quality players littered throughout the team so Im sure they wont be feeling they are a weaker side. They play with a huge amount of confidence at Twickenham.

Ireland bounced back to convincingly beat Wales after losing their RBS 6 Nations opener in France and OSullivan said: To play England at Twickenham you have to up your performance on all fronts.

Looking back at the French game, I dont think it was a bad performance. We just made a few silly errors but against teams like France and England if you make silly errors you pay a huge price.

We focused on eliminating those against Wales and against England it will have to be more of the same. We cant give them soft opportunities because theyll punish us ruthlessly and were well aware of that.

These teams put you under terrible pressure and try and extract these errors from you so the test for us is to not make life easy for England. If you give them a chance they wont waste it.