MALVERN travelled to local rivals Ledbury on what was a wet and blustery day and played against a combined U12 and U13 team.

LEDBURY U12s 28pts, MALVERN U12S 33pts

Ledbury began with some powerful play resulting in them going into a well-deserved 14-0 lead. Malvern took time to adjust to the conditions but when they did score a good try on the blindside through fly-half Alex Swan, Ledbury came straight back to make the half-time score Ledbury 21, Malvern 7.

The second-half belonged to Malvern. With the wind behind them, the try of the match was scored by captain Nat Wallis. The backs cleverly switched play, centre Marc Ziegler passed to Wallis, who was unstoppable and powered over the Ledbury line.

Ledbury again responded immediately scoring another well-worked try but the Malvern forwards were now on the ascendancy and second row Dan Beardsley turned this pressure into points with two tries. With time starting to run out, fly-half Alex Swan again went over to score, his total points tally for the match being 18pts, four of which were conversions.

Kevin Purcell, the Malvern U12s head coach, was full of praise for his squad.

He said: "This is the first time we have ever come back from so far behind, the attitude and commitment of the players was really first class. The joint Ledbury side we played meant that they were always going to be difficult to contend with, but the running lines of the backs were outstanding and the switch move that resulted in Nathan's try was the first chance we have had to see the work that my colleague Sam Lynch has done with backs since he joined us as a coach a couple of weeks ago.

"I am sure that all the work on the training field over the last few weeks has contributed in such great come back performance."