BEN Westwood is receiving plaudits for his performances as the oldest player in Super League.

The Wire’s current longest serving player and ex-England international has started the last four games and particularly caught the eye in his side’s defeat against St Helens on Friday.

Garreth Carvell hailed his former Wire teammate the best player on the field in his opening stint, while Warrington Guardian readers voted the 36-year-old man of the match.

“It’s lovely that,” said Westwood, now in his 17th season in primrose and blue.

“I feel as though I always give it my all.

“Sometimes that’s not good enough and sometimes it is.

“When I retire I will be able to think to myself that I’ve given it a really good bash. I believe that I have and that’s all I can do.

“It’s right that age is just a number. You do slow down the older you get, but I’ve still got it in my heart and I’ve still got it in my head that I can compete.

“I still feel I can get the better of people who are my opponent. The desire is still there. As long as it’s still there hopefully I can keep doing a job.”

“I feel great. Surprisingly, I’m not waking up the morning after a game feeling aching.

“I’m only playing half a game these days but I feel confident in what I’m doing.With Westwood’s experience in the game he is well placed to give an appraisal on Wolves’ start to the season and the first six games under new head coach Steve Price.

Four losses so far have brought issues of conceding the highest number of penalties in Super League, producing too many errors and lacking penetration in attack.

“The systems we’ve got are right, it’s just silly errors and penalties which are really going against us at the minute,” he said.

“We’ve got to be squeaky clean around the ruck area because referees are pulling teams up these days.

“We’re not getting penalised for lying on, it’s silly little things like hands being left in the ruck.

“It’s stuff we need to get out of our game to progress.

“Once we do that I think we’ll be a tough team to beat but we’re just giving too many teams piggy backs.

“First of all, we’ve got to dominate the tackles. Each one of us has to do our job because as soon as we lose a tackle we’re trying to catch up by doing little things like ‘hands in’.

“If we can nullify it in the first place by dominating tackles then we probably wouldn’t get into these situations.

“I do think some of the penalties are really harsh, especially at the weekend. Even 60:40 decisions were going against us.

“But that’s the way it is at the minute, that’s the way the game is going. The game wants the ruck area cleaning up and by the looks of things they want to speed it all up so we’ve got to play ball with them and just work on these things.

“Silly errors as well are hurting us.

“The first two sets of Friday’s game we gave the ball over. We came out after half time having talked about it and the first three sets we gave the ball over.

“When you’re doing that against good teams it’s hard.

“And we’ve had a tough run for the first six games, including three derby games in the space of four weeks and then Hull away in between.

“In two games we just got through but we can’t make silly mistakes against top teams because it shows.

“We’ll be doing everything we can to get it right at the weekend.

“We work really hard, we’re in for long days, so it’s not a matter of we’re not trying to correct it.

“Once we get that sorted I think we’ll be a really tough team to beat.”

Wolves may have compensated in the past with an ability to rattle up points but the attack is not firing at the moment.

“New combinations is a part of it,” said Westwood, who highlighted half-backs Kevin Brown and Tyrone Roberts not having much time together on the training field before the season started.

“I know we haven’t got much time and we’ve lost four now from six, so time’s passing us by.

“But it will click, I’m confident in what we do, and once it clicks it will all fall into place.

“We work tirelessly on the field. And we get a telling off and get put in our place when things aren’t right.

“Steve Price is strict on what we need to do. We just need to convert what we’re doing in training into games.

“But hey, we all drop balls and make errors – that’s all part and parcel of the game, but we’re just doing it too much.

“With the conditions as they are, and always are at the start of the Super League season, the main priority I think is complete, kick and chase.

“We showed that we can do it against Wigan. We gave five penalties away and completed at 82 percent and it was a dominant performance even though the score flattered them.

“We know it’s there, we’ve just got to do it.”