Owen Farrell says he will run out holding hands with his fellow England co-captain Dylan Hartley if required and insists there is no risk of mixed messages when the pair start their new job-sharing arrangement at Twickenham next week.

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With Hartley having missed the summer tour to South Africa – where Farrell led the team to a 2-1 series defeat – the head coach, Eddie Jones, has already joked about them emerging from the tunnel hand in hand to face the Springboks. Farrell is not yet ruling that out – “maybe, it might be an option” – and believes the two friends, who are regular roommates on away trips, will prove a natural fit.

The Northampton hooker and the Saracens fly-half have not yet had a chance to sit down and fully establish how certain on-day duties will be divided but Farrell is adamant that, tactically, the pair already speak with one voice.

“It fits into what we’ve been doing pretty seamlessly anyway,” Farrell said, talking for the first time about the new arrangement. “I don’t think we’re too precious about it. If there is something that pops up, we’re close enough and honest enough to bring it up. I don’t think there would be anything too awkward if either of us had a problem. We see it working to our benefit more than anything.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Owen Farrell and the England squad are expecting preparations to ramp up this weekend at their training camp in Vilamoura. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

Neither Farrell nor Hartley had a huge amount of advance warning before Jones revealed the new leadership structure at the squad announcement last week but the former is adamant there will be no on-field disagreements when, for example, there is a choice between kicking to the corner or taking three points.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Farrell said. “They are joint decisions anyway. There can be a debate before you come up with a decision, but it’s not a case of ‘I want to do this’ and ‘I want to do that’.

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“There might be times when we have to think about it a bit more but we’ve been on the same page for a long time. We are usually pretty aligned, probably because of the amount of conversation we have off the field. I guess that’s a pretty important thing going into this.”

Whoever calls the shots, Farrell hopes England have learned the lessons of their series defeat in South Africa in June, when their only victory came in the final Test in Cape Town after losses in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein.

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“We probably learnt a lot in South Africa,” Farrell said. “The main bit for me is what we did in terms of sticking together. We weren’t going in separate directions, we were getting better together and learning from what was going on.”

With the Boks having twice ruffled New Zealand in recent weeks, England’s challenge is to rise above the loss of several key forwards, with the All Blacks also due at Twickenham on 10 November. Preparations in the Algarve before the autumn series are set to crank up this weekend and Farrell accepts a sluggish start against South Africa is out of the question.

“We have to make sure we hit the ground running. It’s a lot different now to what it was in the summer. They’ve spent a lot of time together since then but we’re excited about the challenge of the first game. We want to be as prepared as we can be.”