The Wallabies have revealed their blueprint for stopping Welsh wizard Shane Williams in Saturday's Test in Cardiff - and it's not rocket science.

The Wallabies' simple plan for the newly-crowned world player of the year is to "get in his face" according to Drew Mitchell, who opposed Williams in Australia's 24-22 loss to Wales at Millennium Stadium in 2005.

"He stood me up pretty clean," Mitchell recalled on Monday.

With Mitchell to play fullback this Saturday, Peter Hynes will have the unenviable task of marking the wing king this time around.

Williams has bagged 14 tries in his past 13 Tests, including six during Wales's march to this year's Six Nations title, and Mitchell admits stopping the 31-year-old flyer is no easy feat.

"It's just his footwork. It's not just his stepping. It's his acceleration out of the step," Mitchell said.

"So where some guys might beat you with the step initially and then don't quite accelerate out of it, then you can recover a little bit, there's just no time for recovery when you're opposing Shane and you don't quite read his footwork too well.

"That's one thing. But the other thing is that he's quite hard to tackle because he's such a small guy and he's actually quite strong as well.

"So unless you get a good shot on him, he's quite hard to bring down."

But the Wallabies hope the new defensive style coach Robbie Deans has introduced this season will work well enough to contain the elusive Williams.

"As a backline, defensively our policies have probably changed somewhat this season," Mitchell said.

"We're aligning from set piece and also from phase so that we've got that opportunity to try to close (the opposition attack) down.

"And I guess that's the key against a guy like Shane Williams, to not give him too much space and get in his face as soon as you can so that he doesn't get that opportunity to step too much.

"You're almost hitting him as he gets the ball."

Although he won't be directly marking Williams, Mitchell still has a key role to play in stopping him.

It involves good communication with Hynes, which shouldn't be too difficult given they have been playing together since their university days in Queensland.

"For us, when I was playing on the wing, it's just knowing and having the confidence that your fullback is going to get that last guy," Mitchell said.

"We're in a position now that we can take care of our man and know that the last man has been taken care of by the fullback.

"It's different to what we've been used to. At the start of the year, there were a few errors here and there because it wasn't second nature to us.

"But having played it for quite a while and trained it every day, it's becoming pretty familiar."

The one certain thing the Wallabies must avoid is showing Williams the sideline.

"I don't know that there are too many wingers in world rugby you'd want to show the sideline to too much," Mitchell said.

"Shane Williams, you've just got to get in his face as quickly as you can and hopefully you don't show him anything, let alone the sideline."

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP