Richard Agar felt his Wakefield Trinity Wildcats team eventually showed their potential after recovering from a slow start to open their Stobart Super League campaign with victory.

Wakefield scored five second-half tries as they came from behind to spoil Widnes Vikings’ return to the top flight with a 32-14 victory on the new artificial pitch at the Stobart Stadium.

The much-changed Wildcats, with 12 debutants in their starting line-up, trailed until just before the hour but finished strongly on a freezing night with Peter Fox touching down twice late on.

Agar said: “I thought for the first 40 minutes they were very erratic and didn’t play with any composure.

“Once we did get control in that last 35 minutes, I thought we showed our potential football-wise and some of the stuff we put on was terrific.

“We weren’t massively worried about being behind, the game was always close.

“In the first half, we had three or four chances we should have put away.

“I was more bothered about us defensively, everything was too quick for us and we played a lot of the first half on our own tryline.”

Ali Lauitiiti scored Wakefield’s first try to keep them in contention at 10-4 at half-time before Andy Raleigh, Richie Mathers and Tim Smith also scored.

The synthetic surface was a talking point with the bounce catching some players out and others cutting themselves, but Agar wanted to reserve judgement.

He said: “I am not going to knock anyone at this point, one game is early to judge. I can see the massive positives it brings to the club.

“We have got some cut knees but you can get cut knees in rock-hard conditions in the middle of summer. I am sure the boys are tough enough to live with that.

“There were a couple of times it looked difficult underfoot but the conditions might have played a part.

“I don’t know how it would play when it is hot and not dewy. The jury’s out - let’s all give it a chance.”

Widnes coach Denis Betts thought Super League should be pleased the pitch allowed the game to go ahead on such a cold night.

He said: “It looked fantastic and you have to say there won’t be many games on in the country at minus six or seven degrees.”

Widnes were competitive for most of the game but were scrappy at times and conceded too many penalties in the second half to dictate the pace.

Betts, whose side’s tries came from Danny Craven, Patrick Ah Van and Hep Cahill, said: “We started okay and finished badly.

“What we saw is a side that tried its best but still doesn’t know itself.

“It lost its way through ill-discipline, started to lose the ruck and got frustrated with the referee.

“That caused us more problems than it should have done and we should have been strong enough to get out of it.”