LEE Hooper branded Malvern Town’s impressive 2-0 win at local rivals Evesham United as the ‘perfect away performance’.
The Hillsiders scored a pair of quickfire goals after the break as Levi Francis and Sam Clark stunned the home side at the Spiers and Hartwell Stadium.
And the result means Malvern sit 10th in the Southern League Division One South table after stretching their unbeaten run to six matches.
Hooper said: “I thought we played very well and we defended very well, it was the perfect away performance.
“Our gameplan was to stay in the game until half time, we knew it was going to be tough based on their league position.
“Stay in the game and then see where that takes us, come in at half time, re-evaluate, and the lads did that.
“We went out with a gameplan to get the ball further forward a bit quicker and play on the full-backs a bit more and we got our just rewards with two good goals.
“The clean sheet is absolutely brilliant.”
Malvern almost broke the deadlock just past the quarter-hour mark as Alex Harris kept out Alex Bell’s initial effort with the midfielder unable to turn home the rebound.
And the Hillsiders had the ball in the back of the net later in the first half courtesy of Clark only for the assistant’s flag to rule the goal out for offside.
Moments later, Evesham had a goal of their own chalked off for offside as the first half ended goalless with chances at a premium.
However, Malvern broke the deadlock on 52 minutes when Francis’ high shot from inside the box found the net at the near post.
And the Hillsiders doubled their lead five minutes later as Clark finished superbly into the bottom right corner from six-yards out.
Town defender Charlie Johnson then produced a stunning goalline clearance to deny Alfie Dunn as he attempted to finish into an empty net.
Evesham went close again late on as Hillsiders goalkeeper Lewis Adams made a fine save to keep out Dunn’s shot in a crowded penalty area.
Malvern are next in action against Bideford AFC on Saturday, November 2 with kick-off at 3pm at the HDAnywhere Community Stadium.
