MALVERN Town's faltering Harvey World Travel Midland Alliance title challenge finally came to an end on Saturday.

CHASETOWN 3, MALVERN TOWN 1

Title rivals Chasetown had the better of the first-half in an explosive match. The game was only eight minutes old when Andy Chalmers was the victim of a bad tackle resulting in the full-back suffering a broken leg.

Astonishingly, no cards were shown.

On 18 minutes, another poor challenge on Tomkins resulted in a mass free-for-all as tempers came to bursting point.

On 20 minutes, Malvern fell behind when they failed to clear a free-kick, skipper Harris driving the ball home from 20 yards.

Malvern retaliated and Bryan dived full-length to thwart Luke Willetts.

Just before half-time, Malvern lost Rich Tomkins to another tackle and went down to ten men. Deep into injury time, two terrible defensive blunders saw Chasetown score twice in two minutes through Newall and Bullimore.

Malvern responded well in the second-half and scored on 50 minutes when the tireless Willetts headed home a Nick Clayton cross.

Malvern, spurred on by Rik Halion's drive in midfield, forced Chasetown to defend deep, but were limited to long-range shots. Halion twice, Preedy and Willetts' attempts just cleared the target.

Malvern did have half-chances, Burrows' effort was well saved and Halion's shot kicked off the line as Malvern threw everything at the champions elect.