Widdop wants to impress at Warrington
St George-Illawarra stand-off Gareth Widdop is anticipating a good game when his NRL team meet the Warrington Wolves in the opening World Club Series clash on Friday evening.
The Dragons have settled well in England in the lead-up to the game, despite the jet lag and differences in climate, and are now intent on doing their best to beat the Wolves.
“Obviously with the first few days there’s a little bit of jet lag,” Widdop said.
“There’s different time zones, and obviously the weather. We’ve come from 35 degree preseason heat to two degrees, which is a bit different!
“But the boys have settled in really well.
“This is pretty much our last hit out before we play round one of the NRL season.
“So everything that we’ve practised needs to be put into a really good performance.
“We’ve done all the hard work, and now it’s about going out and performing. We’ll certainly be going out there and doing our best.
Widdop does not get the chance to catch up on Super League action very often, however, as it is not shown on TV too often in Australia.
This also means that many of his team-mates are failrly ignorant when it comes to what to expect from Super League players.
“I like to watch it, but it’s not really aired on TV in Australia that often,” he said.
“It’s on every now and then, but there’s only one or two games, so it’s quite hard to keep an eye on.
“I check the scores regularly, just to see how teams are travelling etc, but it’s not on TV too much.
“It’s very hard for them [Australians] to keep updated on Super League because it’s not aired often, so it’s hard to keep up solely for that reason.
“But there’s a lot of Aussies who move over here and really enjoy it. It’s a different game, and hopefully these games can grow the competition.
“I think for the English fans, the NRL teams coming over here is a really big buzz for them.
“The fans in Australia will undoubtedly be watching, but it’s a bit different for them as we haven’t started the season over there, so this is effectively a trial game and preparation for round one.
“But I’m sure a lot of fans will get behind it and be watching.”
The England stand-off is also looking forwward to playing at the Halliwell Jones Stadium for the first time in his career.
“I’ve never been there before, but it looks like a great field,” he said.
“I went and watched Bradford versus Leigh the other day, and all the grounds are quite similar. I’m looking forward to getting out there now.
“It’s certainly a lot different. We tend to play at a lot of bigger stadiums in Sydney, but I’ll really enjoy this one because of the atmosphere.”
As for Warrington, Widdop is anticipating a tough test from the Wolves.
“They’re a great team, they’ve got a lot of great players and internationals in their team,” he said.
“But we’ve just got to worry about ourselves. We’ve got to worry about what we do and the way we perform.
“We’ve worked really hard on that in this preseason, and we just need to worry about our jobs in our team and if we do that we’ll be fine.”