MIKE Cooper is confident Warrington Wolves are ‘not far off’ despite opening the Steve Price era with successive defeats.

He and his teammates will be aiming to arrest the sequence at Widnes Vikings tomorrow, Friday, having spent the time since the Round Two loss at Huddersfield on cutting errors out of their game.

The Wire head to Halton Stadium defending a record of nine successive competitive wins against their fierce rivals, but the 20-6 defeat last week in dreadful weather conditions was a drop in standard to the opening 16-12 home loss to champions Leeds Rhinos.

“It was pretty obvious what went wrong at Huddersfield, dropping the ball too much and too many penalties,” said the 29-year-old England prop.

“You can’t do anything in rugby league unless you’re going to hold the ball and have field position. We didn’t have any of that and so we couldn’t get the win.

“We started the game off by kicking the ball out on the full. You don’t expect that, but it just happens. We probably didn’t react well to the start of the game.

“We move on. Everyone’s positive. Obviously we’ve been frustrated with the first two weeks but we’re not letting that get on top of us.

“We’re just focusing on ourselves and not worrying about oppositions too much.

“We’ve done plenty of review, plenty of talking.

“Keeping hold of the ball and not giving penalties away has been the key areas of focus this week.

“If you look back at the Leeds game, we went over the line four times and they held us up. Leeds scored two tries off kicks, there were two tries off kicks again against Huddersfield where we didn’t ground the ball properly and they scored.

“We’re not getting battered. We’re not far off and we’re certainly not panicking.”

Maintaining composure in the heat of battle is something that would benefit The Wire too.

“In a game when you’re on the back foot, conceded a couple of tries and you’re trying to get points back quickly, we’ve probably overplayed and conceded more errors,” said Cooper.

“It’s just about focusing on ourselves, sticking to what we’ve been practising, sticking to our principles which Pricey and the coaches have put in and we’ll be fine.”

Cooper also highlighted training absences as being a reason for patience being needed as The Wire get to grips with working under the new regime.

“We’ve got lads who haven’t been able to train because of injury coming into the side in key positions,” he said.

“The halves haven’t been able to train properly together for a long time, so it’s going to take a bit of time but there’s no panic here.

“It is what it is, you can’t have everyone on the field all the time. It’s just part of the process.”

A ‘derby’ clash, when formbook goes out of the window, provides an opportunity for the players to silence doubters, those who are haunted by the six Super League defeats at the start of last season.

Cooper said: “We spoke this morning about how much the rivalry means to the people of this town, I certainly know that.

“It’s also important to the people of Widnes. I’m sure there’ll be a great atmosphere. They’ve had a strong start to the season so that will add a bit of extra spice to the game.

“No matter which team’s playing well, performances, or results, derby games are different and fired up.

“Widnes do the little things well, they compete hard, the pitch is a bit of an advantage for them as they train on it all the time. It’ll be as tough as it always is.”

The team showing the biggest desire can often come out on top in ‘derby’ games.

“Yeah, but you have to be smart as well and that’s what we’re not doing,” said Cooper.

“You can want it as much as you want and you can see our effort has been there 100 per cent, but the execution has been letting us down.

“You can have all the effort in the world but if you drop the ball it’s a waste of time, so that’s our focus.”