A straight talker even by the standards of Wigan, where he was brought up in northern England’s rugby league heartland, Farrell seemed genuinely non-plussed by the relentless questions about his promotion back to the starting team ahead of George Ford for Saturday's huge World Cup Pool A game at Twickenham.
"What reaction? Whose reaction?," he said when he was asked for his take on Stuart Lancaster’s widely-debated decision to swap his flyhalves.
"I don’t read the papers. People can say what they want. It's the people inside the camp who count. External factors don't matter to us. It doesn't motivate me."
A room packed with press and TV reporters in the shadow of Twickenham would not settle for that, though, and pressed Farrell on how the selection had impacted on his relationship with Ford, who started in the opening win over Fiji and played through the Six Nations when Farrell was injured.
"We’ve been exactly the same," he said. "It was the same in August when he got picked and I was on the bench.
"We’re both just trying to be the best for the team and push each other, just as we have all summer."
Which is hardly surprising as the two men -- Ford is 15 months younger at 22 -- have been friends and international age group team mates since they were 13.
"We talk about everything anyway and we don’t have anything we don’t lay out there rugby-wise," he said.
"We’re two people who are obsessed with the game, we're probably a bit boring really."
England forwards coach Graham Rowntree, unsurprisingly, also rejected the suggestion that dropping Ford was evidence of Stuart Lancaster going back on the attacking game he had been developing over the last six months.
"For this game we have gone with this selection as a reflection of who we are playing against," he said.
"You've got to choose the right tools for what's in front of you. That's what most teams do around the world -- that's selection. It's the art of having a big squad and good competition for places.
"It is a 23-man job and the World Cup is a 31-man job."
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
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