MALVERN Town made Hellenic League Challenge Cup progress with a 3-1 victory over Lydney Town last weekend.

Town started with a good tempo and some neat early passages of play as Lewis Platt’s cross picked out Matt Turner who dipped an effort over from the edge of the area.

At the other end, English fired over before a foul on Joe Bates out wide earned us a free-kick which was whipped in by Louis Loader and headed wide by Liam Paddock.

The Hillsiders opened the scoring on 13 minutes when good link-up play between Clark and Turner saw the latter cross low for Bates at the far post who made no mistake.

The visitors’ were on the back-foot but against the run of play, shortly before the break, the visitors levelled matters with a strike out of the blue from distance by Hamblett.

In stoppage time at the end of the half, Town thought they had re-gained the lead but Turner’s effort was ruled out for offside and the scored remained 1-1.

Despite the hosts asking most of the questions, they could not find the net until 75 minutes were on the clock when Loader’s free-kick from out wide was met by the head of Clark who planted his effort home.

As the clock ticked down and the visitors pushed up in search of a leveller, Malvern caught Lydney on the breakaway right at the end as Nathan Chowns Higgs slotted home to make it 3-1 and see them progress to the next round, where they will face Bishop's Cleeve.

Co-manager, Lee Hooper, gave his verdict: “We played some really good football. We had to be patient to get the goals and could have won by a bigger margin in the end. We created plenty of chances and there were some very positive aspects against Step 5 opponents.

“As I say, we had some excellent passages of play and whilst we could have been more clinical, we were happy with the three goals and some impressive performances throughout the team.

“We’ve got a good bunch of lads here; there is plenty of quality and versatility amongst the squad and now we look forward to the challenge that Bishop’s Cleeve will present in the next round.

“Whoever you come up against at this stage of the competition will be tough. All we can ask is a home draw and hopefully we can give a good account of ourselves and get through.”