TWICKENHAM -- England fly-half Owen Farrell has paid no attention to any of the hype around the team selection ahead of Saturday's titanic Rugby World Cup clash against Wales at Twickenham.

Eyebrows were raised when Stuart Lancaster opted to shuffle his half-backs and midfield with Farrell starting ahead of Ford and Sam Burgess coming in for the injured Jonathan Joseph ahead of this weekend's game. Farrell was in a bullish mood when facing the press on Friday and when asked about the reaction to the team selection, Farrell said he only cares about the opinions inside England's camp.

"People can say what they want. It is the people inside the camp that count to me. The people around me. External factors don't matter to us. We go into the game looking forward to it. It is obviously a massive challenge and everyone is excited about it.

"All I want to do is do my job for this team, like everybody has been doing over the past 12 weeks. They want to do the best for this team and push this team forward. That is hopefully what we will do tomorrow."

Ford was said to be "devastated and gutted" at being dropped according to his Bath coach and father Mike but Farrell's friendship with his fly-half counterpart has not been tarnished despite the shift in pecking order ahead of the biggest match of Lancaster's tenure.

"We have been exactly the same, absolutely normal," Farrell said of his rapport with Ford. "We talk about everything anyway. It's exactly the same as it was last week, as it was in the autumn when he got picked and I went on the bench. Exactly the same."

Farrell added of their rugby history: "We played with each other since we went to school together, 13/14, then ended up playing England 16s, 18s, 20s. We are just open with each other. We don't have anything that we don't say out there. Rugby-wise, we are two people who are obsessed with the game, we like to talk about it, we are probably a bit boring really, all we talk about is rugby. I'd say it's pretty open."