Sonny Bill Williams has revealed a sneaky training session with Wigan's rivals Warrington has the Sydney Roosters well prepared to win Saturday's World Club Challenge.
Wigan boss Shaun Wane was livid when he discovered the team his side defeated in last year's Super League grand final were passing on their knowledge to help the NRL premiers fine-tune their game plan for the Allianz Stadium showdown.
Warrington, coached by Tony Smith, the brother of former Roosters mentor Brian, travelled to Australia in January for a training camp.
Smith and his staff went through video of Wigan's matches with Roosters coach Trent Robinson and then Warrington simulated how the famous English club would attack during an opposed training session.
Roosters superstar Williams, who lost a World Club Challenge with Canterbury against Leeds in 2005, says Warrington gave them a heads up on a few potential surprises the Roosters will now be ready for come Saturday night.
"We've done a bit of video on the Wigan side and we kind of know what they're going to bring," Williams said.
"We did some training against Warrington a couple of weeks ago and they threw a bit at us that we weren't used to with the style they played.
"Hopefully we can use that as a stepping stone to what we're going to do."
Williams says the inside tips from Warrington have been especially useful given he and many of the Roosters squad are a little underdone following a heavy World Cup representation late last year.
The second rower said last week's Nines tournament had also impacted preparations, but he's confident the Roosters can add to their trophy cabinet.
"I'm definitely excited. I played in one before and got done over there so looking forward to this big challenge," he said.
"We've trained pretty smart so we're going to be building into the season. (The World Cup) is definitely not going to be an excuse we use when we come up against Wigan.
"It's going to be an enormous battle. They've got some great forwards and so do we."
