STEVE Price will be making selection changes for Wolves’ second pre-season friendly against Rochdale Hornets.

New signings Sita Akauola and Tyrone Roberts will not be among the fresh faces though as the head coach looks for an improved display to the 26-22 loss at Widnes Vikings on December 29.

Price explained that powerhouse forward Akauola and marquee scrum-half Roberts, along with former Wigan Warriors prop Dom Crosby, are not ready for action at this stage.

“We’ll bring in a couple of other players who didn’t play at Widnes,” said Price ahead of the expected squad confirmation today, Thursday.

“There’s a couple of players with a few niggles at the moment after off-season surgery which they’ve had – that’s Sitaleki, Dom and Tyrone. That’s just going to take a little bit of time.”

At this point it remains unclear whether the trio will be fit for the opening Super League clash with Leeds Rhinos on Thursday, February 1.

“That’s a hard one at the moment. I can’t really answer that until we get a little closer,” he said.

The Wire will head into Saturday’s meeting with partner club Rochdale at the Crown Oil Arena, kick off 3pm, on the back of a five-day camp in South Wales that ends with the captain’s run tomorrow, Friday, before returning north.

Tongan World Cup star Ben Murdoch-Masila joined up with the squad for the first time when he flew in from Australia in midweek.

Wolves have focused their week away heavily on skills, gym work and conditioning.

Now Price wants to see the hard work produced by his players so far in the training arena transferred into a match and he highlighted areas in which he would like to see improvement from the festive ‘derby’.

“The stuff that I want to see implemented in this game is the stuff I’ve been really pleased with through the pre-season, everything where we ticked the boxes,” he said.

“I just felt we were a bit off in that friendly. I’m looking for a fair bit of change, certainly with our contact and our intent, and certainly aspects in our attacking structures.”

Brad Pinder, one of the academy players who completed the pre-Christmas training programme with the first team, continues to train with the full-time squad.

Price said it is not just a reward for the efforts and performance of the England Academy hooker.

“It is where I feel positionally we can have a little bit more back-up,” he said.