TWO tries from man-of-the-match, Ben Clewer, helped the Pirates to their third successive win in the North Midlands U17 league at Spring Lane on Sunday.

MALVERN U17s Pirates 24 pts, HEREFORD U17s 12 pts

Hereford U17s are a well-drilled outfit and a side that the Pirates have never beaten in their annual encounters since they first met in 1999.

Nevertheless with a good win under their belts against a powerful Ludlow side, Malvern were confident of finally putting the losing streak to rest.

With Hereford contained within their own half, Malvern opened their account in the 16th minute with a controlled rolling maul from the Hereford 22. A peal-off from the maul caught Hereford napping and from the resulting ruck, quick-ball from scrum-half Sam Jones found the safe hands of prop-forward Ben Clewer who crashed over for Malvern's first try.

The conversion from stand-in fly-half Phil Shore was missed, but immediately from the re-start, Shore was in the thick of the action he instrumented as Malvern surged forward towards the Hereford line.

However, despite coming under intense pressure from the Pirates, Hereford remained disciplined and contained the score to 5-0 at the half-time break.

Both sides made changes at the beak the game finally opened up with strong running from both backlines. But Malvern were more effective in defence and with excellent support from all quarters, the home side regained control and forced a line-out five metres from the Hereford line. A short line-out was called and with Chris Jones stealing the ball effortlessly, a pod of loose Malvern forwards rumbled over with Clewer claiming his second try of the match.

Hereford tried to maintain a grip on the match after the restart, but the quick-hands and blistering pace of the Malvern backline was to counter and within the space of ten minutes, Craig Griffiths had extended Malvern's lead to 24 points with two excellent tries and the extra conversion points from Phil Shore.

In the final stages a number of injuries to key Malvern players forced more changes from the bench and Hereford were quick to exploit the lapse of control with two late tries to add some respectability to the final result.

Gary Tolley, the Pirates' head coach was full of praise for the squad. He said: "Our main aim was to deny Hereford any options of taking an early lead in this match and thanks to the defensive skills of the whole team, we did that quite comfortably. Unfortunately some of our finishing was not up to scratch."