A POOR match saw Malvern lose 18-7 at home to Longton for their fifth straight defeat in Midlands One.

All 30 players and even the referee seemed to be affected by the uncertainty that comes with a basement battle.

Both sides made basic errors, spilling the ball, taking wrong options and conceding turn-overs unnecessarily.

The poor flow of the game was not helped by the referee with much flashing of the yellow card.

Malvern missed two penalty attempts in a disappointing first quarter which produced little action of note.

Longton’s Paul Green broke the deadlock with a 23rd-minute penalty.

The referee stunned both packs by sin-binning Dan Batten for the technical offence of not binding without prior warning.

Malvern survived with 14 men until the break, by which time they had lost outside centre John Martin to injury.

Three minutes into the second-half, Malvern conceded a penalty for dissent and Green increased the visitors’ lead.

They quickly repeated the indiscipline and Longton set up a drive from the line-out for hooker Martin Kent to score the first try. Green converted.

At a maul from the restart, the yellow card came out again, this time for Longton’s openside flanker Nazewa.

On the hour, Richard Fleming was yellow carded for dissent and followed into the sin-bin two minutes later by Christian Edwards. Longton took advantage to drive over for a 69th-minute try from Nazewa, who was then sin-binned for a second time.

With three minutes left, Malvern started to play and the departing Huw Dimond went over for a try and a conversion before leaving for Italian rugby.

Malvern director of rugby David Robins said: “This was a very poor performance and the lads know it.

“They had a great chance to record a first league win against fellow strugglers but blew it totally.

“Neither side seemed capable of much but Longton did put pressure on the Malvern half-backs and that meant that we were on the back foot.

“They also played on the referee’s weaknesses better than us, especially as he didn’t once spot their backs encroaching offside. However, we were tactically bereft of ideas and didn’t play with enough control.

“We have now arguably lost four winnable games out of five and need to get our decision-making right.

“In fairness, we suffered by being up against a much heavier pack and we missed a couple of our key lads in the pack, as well as injured skipper Ryan Watkins and winger Tom Beechey.

“All should be recovered for our next match on October 25, a tough away game at Kenilworth, who we know are a big-money club who have recruited several good players since last year.”

This weekend, there is no first XV game as Malvern have a bye in the Intermediate Cup.