World Club Challenge: Wigan captain Sean O'Loughlin praises players in a losing cause

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Jared Waerea-Hargreaves was delighted to score as Sydney Roosters ran out six tries to beat Wigan Warriors 36-14 in the World Club Challenge.

The Warriors - bidding to become the first team to win the event four times - put up a brave fight at the Allianz Stadium but ultimately paid the price for a sloppy opening quarter.

The Roosters led 18-0 after 20 minutes and although the reigning Super League champions threatened to make a game of it in the second half, they'd simply left themselves with too much ground to make up.

"It was a massive effort from us tonight," O'Loughlin said afterwards. "We came up against a world-class team.

"We probably didn't do ourselves justice in parts of the game but we stayed with it and fought hard to the end. It's disappointing but it's a good level to come and test us."

Australia Test centre Michael Jennings became the first player to score a hat-trick of tries in a World Club Challenge, while Shaun Kenny-Dowall, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Sam Moa also touched down for Sydney.

Wigan managed three tries of their own in the second half, Josh Charnley getting two on his 100th appearance after fellow winger Joe Burgess had finally got the visitors on the scoreboard.

Big set

"We kept hold of the ball and they came up with a few errors like we did in the first half," O'Loughlin added. "We had plenty of the ball and they did plenty of defence.

"We caused them a bit of trouble but we didn't do it for long enough and when they did get the ball they caused us a lot of trouble around the middle.

"They're a big set, it's tough to defend against them."

Roosters counterpart Anthony Minichiello admitted the NRL champions were particularly keen to triumph on their own patch as the match was staged Down Under for the first time since 1994, when Wigan beat the Brisbane Broncos.

"We wanted to finish off last year with a World Club Challenge win," the full-back said.

"It's the first time in 20 years that an English team has come out here and we spoke about that. It was really great to see all our fans come out too. We were a bit rusty but we got the job done.

"We prepared well. Wigan are a great team and we had to make sure our defence was on."