Sydney Roosters centre Shaun Kenny-Dowall is anticipating some “brutal” exchanges up front against the Warriors in Auckland on Saturday night as two tough sets of forwards go at each other.

Both teams are backing up from impressive performances, with Roosters prop Jared Waerea-Hargreaves believing his pack have the goods to be the NRL’s most dominant.

The Warriors’ challenge will be led by Waerea-Hargreaves’ hard-hitting Kiwis teammate Ben Matulino, whom many fans on this side of the Tasman consider to be the competition’s form front-rower.

Among Matulino’s back-up will be Queensland Origin prop Jacob Lillyman, who put in a strong shift against Brisbane last weekend in his first appearance of the season after an arm injury.

“It’s going to be an awesome game up front,” Kenny-Dowall said on Friday.

“They’ve got some really good forwards, but so have we, so it’s going to be a pretty brutal game. I’m looking forward to it.”

The Roosters are coming off a 24-6 win over Newcastle in which they ground their opponents down in the opening spell before producing some razzle-dazzle to pull away in the second half.

A similar recipe looks on the cards against the Warriors as they guard against trying to be too expansive too early.

“We have to be patient and earn our stripes to go out wide,” Kenny-Dowall said.

“That’s something our forwards are really good at – get the go-forward first – and hopefully we can play football a bit later.”

The two sides met only five rounds ago, when the Roosters’ pack laid the platform for an emphatic 26-8 win over a disjointed Warriors side.

It’s a match Warriors coach Brian McClennan hasn’t forgotten.

“The Roosters spanked us,” was his blunt assessment.

“We let ourselves down and the Roosters were too smart, too good and too physical,” he said.

“They were the much better team and probably deserved to have won by more points.”

The Warriors went on to suffer another bad loss the week after against Canberra.

Since then, they’ve managed to build some momentum with a big win over South Sydney, a competitive effort in defeat against leaders Melbourne and an upset victory over second-placed Brisbane.

The 30-20 result over the Broncos put them up to 11th on the ladder with eight points, just two points outside the top eight.

The Roosters, whom McClennan is according plenty of respect, are two points and two places above them.

Apart from a couple of hiccups – big defeats at the hands of North Queensland and Melbourne – the Sydneysiders were “humming along nicely”, he said.