JUST when it looked as though Malvern might be on the road to recovery, they came up against a resurgent young Walsall side at Delves Road on Saturday.

WALSALL 50pts, MALVERN 22pts

With open side flanker Dave Hill taking a head injury in the first minute, Walsall ran the ball at Malvern and prop Ian Bradshaw went over near the corner in the third minute. Malvern made running repairs to the pack, hooker Irish replacing Hill and Chris Pemble making his debut at hooker.

Playing into a strong wind, Malvern struggled to gain meaningful possession, whilst the home standoff, Mike Swingwood, made the most of the elements to keep Malvern pinned back.

Despite sorties by Blakeway and Hart, Walsall always looked the more threatening, their forwards comfortable whilst running at the Malvern midfield and their backs speedy and elusive.

Malvern again suffered from an inability to settle quickly and from the mysterious MFT Syndrome (Missed First Tackles), which allowed Walsall to dominate in terms of geography and possession.

In the 14th minute the home side sucked in the Malvern defence and created an overlap from which centre Ben Shepherd scored, Swing-wood bagging the conversion.

In the second quarter, the Malvern pack came to life and made good ground, led by a fiery performance by skipper Shaun Lancett, but poor handling saw Walsall regain possession and go downfield for scrum half Butler to go over for a dubious try - it was later admitted that he was short of the line.

Just before half time Andy Longley pulled back three points with a Malvern penalty.

The visitors started the second half much more positively. With the wind and slope now in their favour and Moaby and Longley kicking well for position, the Malvern pack pressed hard and a driving maul saw Lancett in for a 45th minute try, which Longley converted.

Only one score behind, Malvern should have turned the screw on the Staffordshire side, but Walsall saw the danger and reacted accordingly. They ran the ball upfield and a period of sustained pressure, compounded yet again by crucial tackles being missed, saw inside centre Neil Weston over the line for another two points to Swingwood.

Malvern failed to secure the ball from the restart and Walsall, now full of confidence, surged up the field again, second row and skipper Mark Gilbert shrugging off some half-hearted attempts to give Swingwood another easy kick.

At 31-10, Malvern were under the cosh and brought on the two remaining replacements. The young but competent Walsall scrum remained solid all afternoon, and to compound Malvern's predicament Mark Eastwood suffered a knee injury and could not continue, leaving them with fourteen men.

The already fragile defence couldn't now hope to stem a cock-a-hoop Walsall side, which duly ran in three more tries from Weston, Gilbert and Swingwood, all converted, to give them the half-century.

To their credit, the Malvern players stuck gamely to a difficult task and the pack raised their game to put Walsall under pressure in the last 15 minutes.

Lancett broke, fed Pemble who put Rob Young in for Longley to convert, then another drive saw Blakeway score in the dying minutes of the game, but it was all too little, too late.

David Robins, director of rugby, said: "Two crucial injuries did not help our cause, but cannot explain away this heavy defeat to a side we felt we could beat. Our tackling was very poor and we let Walsall run through us at will on several occasions.

"On the day, they were by far the better side, their pack solid and comfortable with the ball in hand, whilst they have a tricky set of backs. However, we knew this beforehand and can only blame ourselves for this defeat.

"We have two weeks to get it right for the local derby against an in-form Luctonians side, with an away friendly against a strong Dudley-Kingswinford second string this Saturday."