Wakefield Trinity head coach Daryl Powell was pleased with the 'clinical' nature of his side's 32-8 victory over Castleford Tigers on Friday night. Trinity were comfortable winners in Luke Gale’s testimonial game, with the expansive nature of their play catching Powell’s eye.

Moving the ball wide and also playing both directly and aggressively, Wakefield were night and day from their Boxing Day performance against Leeds Rhinos at Headingley, with the West Yorkshire side posting six tries in the pre-season clash.

Scoring through Lachlan Walmsley, Cam Scott, Josh Rourke, Seth Nikotemo, Ky Rodwell, and Caleb Uele, Wakefield were good value. However, Powell, while content with his side's display, isn’t getting carried away, with a long road still to go as they gear up for their return to Super League, but that still didn’t take away the satisfaction of a solid night's work—in particular, a young crop of players holding their own in the second half as both sides made numerous changes.

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"It’s hard when you put a new team together; you don’t really know what to expect," Powell told Rugby League Live post-match. "We’ve trained pretty well, and we feel like we’ve put a pretty decent squad together. I thought our start to the game was class. We got some good field position, and we looked pretty clinical, to be honest, which was one of the things I spoke to the boys about before.

"I said be organised and be clinical, and we nailed that. We conceded a couple of soft tries; they didn’t really have much pressure on our line. There are a couple of bits to work on there, but overall I thought we were good."

He continued: "Our younger players were also really good at the end, and I know Cas have been talking their young kids up a bit, so it was pleasing to see some growth there within our younger players. Overall, I’m really pleased.

"Obviously we’ve been out of Super League for a year, and we’ve built a new team. I know Cas have a fair few new signings in there as well, but for us to be that clinical at times and execute as we did and then be that stiff defensively, I thought our line speed was good and our attitude to it overall was outstanding.

“It’s pleasing, but it’s only pre-season, and we’re not going to get too carried away, but for us to come up with that sort of performance when we’ve had a short-ish pre-season was really pleasing."

Playing some slick rugby league, Wakefield started strong and let the ball do the mileage. They had good go-forward and then worked it to their edges, with an easy-on-the-eye attack on show. But after a performance at Leeds that saw Wakefield get dominated for large parts, it was the toughness of his side that equally pleased Powell.

"I thought our balance of playing really direct and aggressive and then moving the ball at the right time was good," he explained. "It was tough conditions at times, and our execution was really good. The ball movement was great, and so was our ability to carry the ball aggressively.

"I thought we got dominated physically at Christmas, to be honest, so we wanted to step up. We had some of our better players come into the team, and we’ve still got quite a few to come back in who are of good quality. Competition for places is pretty strong. It was a big step up from what we did at Christmas. Leeds look a bit stronger than Castleford did tonight; they really went after that game, but overall we’ve got to be pleased with what we’ve done.

"Again, we won’t get too carried away; we still want to look at some areas where we want to work a little bit harder on, but there’s also validation that some of the things we’ve been working on are going well enough to go into Super League and challenge teams."

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