Wakefield Trinity reaction: New signings Renouf Atoni and Morgan Smith praised after win at Leeds Rhinos

New Zealand-born front-rower Atoni has played in the NRL for Canterbury Bulldogs, while Smith - a half-back or hooker - joined Trinity from Featherstone Rovers.

Atoni marked his first appearance for Wakefield with a try and Applegarth felt he put his best foot forward.

“That’s what you want,” he said. “He has been in the country about 10 days and he was desperate to play.

“He is an exciting player and hopefully one who will take a few by surprise this year.”

Of Smith, Applegarth said: “He plays some great eyes-up rugby and he will definitely be in the mix with Lee [Gaskell] and Mason [Lino] for round one.

“There’s a pretty difficult choice there and he put his hand up to play nine for us, with Liam Hood being injured with a bit of a calf strain.

“Harry Bowes has also had a bit of a calf strain and hasn’t trained until a few days ago and for Morgan to play 40 minutes at nine and then move to half-back and play both [roles] how he did, you know you’ve got a good player on your hands.

“He will be a really handy addition to our squad and I am pleased he has gone out there and shown what he can do.”

Trinity scored five tries in the final quarter to get Applegarth’s reign off to a winning start and the coach reflected: “I think both teams will be walking away pretty happy with what they got out of it.”

He said: “We’ve been working hard on certain things in training over the first block of pre-season, pre-Christmas and when we got that composure with ball in hand and we started knocking a few sets out in areas of the field we wanted to, I thought we looked okay.

“Obviously there’s a few areas we need to fix up on and some things we haven’t covered yet, but I’m pretty pleased.”

Max Jowitt suffered a knock in the second half, but Applegarth said “It’s nothing major, just a bit of a bump to his side.”