Super League play-offs: Can new faces Wakefield shock Wigan old hands?

There was only one name in the frame for owner Matt Ellis once he had completed his Wakefield takeover back in late 2023.

Daryl Powell’s experience at Warrington failed to match the achievements he had built up at Leeds, Featherstone and, most importantly, Castleford where he brought a League Leaders’ Shield plus Grand Final and Challenge Cup final appearances to the Wheldon Road faithful.

But Powell was tempted back to coaching by the opportunity at Belle Vue and it has been a magical marriage since, with the play-offs achieved in the first year back in the top tier, backed up by reaching the semi-finals this term with victory over Leigh.

Tyson Smoothy swapped the NRL Grand Final for the northern hemisphere after signing for Trinity from Brisbane Broncos, but his whistlestop tour will end this season after he signed for new franchise Perth Bears.

Yet the 27-year-old has seen enough to realise just how far the team has come and how significant further success would be to a club building a similar buzz to their 1950s and 1960s heyday.

“You look at the crowd on Friday just gone, how much it means to them just to make finals in general,” Smoothy told BBC Radio Leeds.

“To be able to go to Old Trafford and a Grand Final would be massive for the club, but we’re not looking too far ahead.

“We touched on earlier in the year that a similar thing happened last year when I left Broncos and won a Grand Final, hopefully I can do it again and it would be a nice way to finish.”