The Red Dragons’ new manager took over this week after Graham Barrow’s sudden exit.
He may have arrived at the Racecourse Ground at the perfect time.
Despite a difficult time, Wrexham are now up to third place and just two points off leaders Leyton Orient.
They closed the gap after beating Dagenham 1-0 and Hughes told the club’s official website that the fact the winner was scored by substitute Stuart Beavon shows he has quality to work with.
“It’s great to get off to a winning start in front of the home fans,” he said.
“We could have made it a lot easier for ourselves, we had numerous chances to kill the game off, but the players did what was asked of them.
“I wanted to see that togetherness, that unified approach. Late on, that was there in abundance.
“We defended like trojans at times. Credit to Dagenham, they threw everything at us at the end but we defended well.
“Overall, on the whole performance, I thought the substitutes made a real big impact after they came on.
“Teams are going to come here and try to stifle us, as Dagenham did, and we need people who are ready to come and make an impact and that’s what happened.”
He added: “I just felt that we need a little more energy, a little more impetus in those forward areas.
“Going forward, we just needed a lift and credit to Beavon and to Rutherford – they are the type of players who can do that, and they are full of energy.”