Summer lovin' gives Wakefield Trinity a blast, says Arona

The Cook Islands international was among the try scorers in Sunday’s 44-22 win over Widnes Vikings in a game rearranged from the big freeze in March.

Trinity revelled in the warm conditions and Arona reckons summer rugby suits them. He said: “It was one extreme to another – the first game was abandoned because it was snowing and [on Sunday] it could have been called off because it was too hot! But we are an attacking rugby team and it’s hard to do that in the wet.”

Wakefield’s forwards had to dig deep after Danny Kirmond suffered a game-ending knee injury inside the opening three minutes, leaving Trinity down to three substitutes. Arona admitted: “I wasn’t expecting to come on so early. It was a bit of a shock, but I thought the forward pack did a good job. At half-time I mentioned the back-five doing a good job getting us out of our own end which saves us forwards a bit of energy for defence, so all round it was a good team performance in that first half.”

Trinity took their foot off the gas in the second period, when both sides scored 22 points. Arona said: “It was disappointing conceding that many in one half. I think we can maybe put it down to a couple of individual errors, giving them too much territory and possession. Most of the tries they scored came from a penalty or an error. We have got things to improve on this week and we know we need to do that to put a good performance in against St Helens on Friday.”