WHITCHURCH 13PTS, MALVERN 31PTS

MALVERN returned after the longest league trip of the season to find they had become clear Midlands Two West leaders as close contenders dropped points on Saturday.

Expecting Whitchurch to provide the toughest opposition to date, the lads from Spring Lane drove to the home 22 from the kick-off. Conceding a penalty, the first of many, they turned over the Whitchurch line-out and set up a drive through James Hynes. From a throw on the five metre line, the pack drove the maul, changing the angles for veteran prop Steve Cooper to claim the first scalp of the afternoon with only three minutes gone.

The Shropshire side were stunned by the sheer intensity of Malvern's play, the forwards setting the backs away time after time on the wide pitch to stretch the home defence. George Roberts and Richard Fleming both heavily involved, the former reaching the line but adjudged not to have grounded the ball.

After a further 10 minutes of sustained activity deep in the home half, Chris Hooper put a penalty to the five-metre line, Malvern secured the line-out and Hynes peeled off to terrify the diminutive scrum-half as he steamrollered through to score. It took until the end of the first quarter for Whitchurch to make any meaningful territorial inroads, scrum half Matthews putting over two penalties, but Malvern's riposte was swift and incisive.

Hooper made a telling run from full-back to link up with Ted Lang, who set Roberts off on an unstoppable 50 metre scoring run, Lang taking the extra two points.

The backs again ran from deep in the Malvern half with a dazzling and fluent display of inter-passing that put winger James Gwynne in for a superb try, Lang again converting.

With the half back pairing of Dan Sparrey and Ryan Watkins clicking well after superb service from the much-changed forwards, Malvern were drawing gasps of admiration from the home crowd as well as the small but vocal band of loyal travelling supporters. However, Whitchurch made an attempt to fight back as the half drew to a close and some frantic defence saw Cooper and Fleming sin binned within two minutes of each other just before the break.

Forced to fight a rearguard action at the beginning of the second period, the Malvern defence held up well, Rawle, Banwell, Dave Smith and Wenden busy in the loose and in the line.

However, the exchange referee, was perhaps a little too anxious to please his assessor and awarded several penalties.

Having lost Hynes's bulk to a minor injury, the scrimmaging suffered and Whitchurch sensed a comeback. They won a penalty to set up the catch and drive and scored to bring them back to 13-24.

With 20 minutes left, it was now Malvern on the back foot for most of the remaining time until the home number four was sin-binned and play evened up. With minutes left, Malvern won a scrum, Hooper joined the line at pace, passed to Lang and the youngster put Gwynne in for the killer try, which Lang converted. Whitchurch then had their open side flanker sin-binned, although the four yellow cards didn't do justice to a hard fought but generally clean game.