NO match against Widnes Vikings will ever be a ‘dead rubber,’ Wolves forward Mike Cooper says.

The near neighbours meet at The Halliwell Jones Stadium tonight, Thursday, in the final game of Super League’s regular rounds.

Both sides will fight for their top-flight survival in the Middle 8s after the split, with The Wire guaranteed to finish ninth and Widnes unable to finish higher than their current position of 11th.

Despite there not appearing to be much at stake, Warrington-born Cooper knows how much ‘derby’ matches in any context mean to the supporters.

However, he says the team would be just as keen to ensure they head into the next phase of the campaign in good form against non-local opposition.

“There’s no mention of dead rubbers from me. I’ve not even thought about that,” he said.

“Regardless of what is happening in the table, it’s a local derby.

“This season has not been great and we know it’s been as tough for the fans as it has for us, if not tougher.

“Even when we’ve been losing games, we’ve still had great support from the fans and we want to repay them by playing well.

“Just speaking to local people around the town, you can tell how much beating Wigan last week meant to them. It will be the same for Widnes.

“We want to win, whether it’s against Widnes or a team from further away.

“Each week, we’re trying to be better than the week before. We’ve not really been able to string consistent results together so we need to crack on and do that.

“If we can go into this break we have having won three on the spin, the feeling around the place will be much better.”

Thursday’s 16-10 victory at Wigan kept The Wire’s slim hopes of scraping into the top eight alive, but they were extinguished 24 hours later by Huddersfield’s 26-4 win over Leigh.

However, while their Middle 8s spot has only just been mathematically confirmed, England international Cooper says the squad “got their heads around” a fight for survival well in advance.

“We were hoping Huddersfield would lose to Leigh so we’d go into this game with a fighting chance but obviously it didn’t work out that way,” he said.

“We’ve had two good performances against Leigh and Wigan but it’s not been enough. That’s because of what we’ve done over the year.

“We’ve probably had our head around being in the Middle 8s for a couple of weeks now as we were relying on other people.

“It is what it is, that’s what happens in sport.

“Teams in different sports have had bad seasons and bounced back but we’ve still got a job to do this year.”

Cooper looks set to start at loose forward tonight, Thursday, as regular incumbent Joe Westerman is still absent with a hip problem.

Despite being better known as a prop throughout his career with Wolves, England and NRL side St George Illawarra Dragons, the 28-year-old says the positions are pretty much interchangeable in the modern game.

“There’s been people saying I’m definitely not a loose forward but there’s no difference between the positions anymore,” he said.

“Take Chris Hill for example, he’s got one of the best passes you could ever see and loose forwards are supposed to be able to pass the ball.

“Even when we start at prop, at some point in every game we all go to loose forward. Every team in the world does it.”