Kay - England can overcome injury problems.

By Ben Kay

England's challenge for the RBS 6 Nations title resumes on Sunday when they take on Italy at Twickenham.

In his latest exclusive column with Tetley's, Official Beer of England Rugby, England star Ben Kay looks ahead to the showdown as he prepared to meet up with the squad for training.

Having so many injuries is not great ahead of our game against Italy, but it does give the likes of Joe Worsley a real chance to come in and show what they can do.

With the depth of talent to our squad, we have players in every position that can come in so at this stage I don't think it's a major concern to our title hopes.

Although they will not be training, it will be beneficial from both an individual and a team point of view to have the injured players with us this week.

They will have 24-hour access to what is probably the best medical set-up in professional sport in this country and, in such an important year, being at every meeting and training session means they will not miss anything.

We will be training with the England `A' squad, something that Clive Woodward felt made a big contribution to our wins over France.

From a second row's point of view, it was great because we had a whole other pack to train against which meant we could do live line-outs.

In the past, they have brought in Cambridge University who have trained fantastically well, but are not of international standard. This week, we will be practising against one of the best line-outs in the world.

We also saw the other benefit with Robbie Morris who trained with us during the week of the French game and was then able to slot straight in and play really well against Wales.

It will be a case of trying to fit everything in without tiring the players out too much. Rather than have one big line-out session, we will probably have lots of short and sharp sessions throughout the week.

We've won both games so far which is massively important, but there is still a lot to work on. Things have not gone perfectly too early on and the coaches will want to make sure we keep improving.

I think our objective against Italy will be the same as it was against Wales – to win and to not let them score a try. How it goes will be decided in the first 20 minutes. There will be a big emphasis on making sure we are really up for it in that opening spell or Italy could shock us.

No-one can write the Italians off - we saw what they did against Wales. They are a very proud nation and would love nothing more than to beat England at Twickenham to show the world that they have arrived.

We are in a good position, but we have still got three games to go. We might be considered favourites, but Ireland have been playing really well and look like being candidates to be in the title race at the end.

They have got a big game against France, but they are at home. However, if France beat Ireland then we have got to make sure we don't slip up otherwise they could take the title again.