MALVERN Town's Express and Star West Midlands League premier division championship hopes received a potentially terminal set back when they went down by the odd goal in five to Tipton Town.

MALVERN TOWN 2, TIPTON TOWN 3

Although the Black Country outfit remain in second place, they are now only two points adrift of Town and have a crucial two games in hand.

Malvern will now require maximum points from their remaining two games and will be hoping that the likes of Kington and Ledbury can do them a major favour when they play Tipton during the season's final two weeks.

Although prolific scorer Ravi Sanga again took the headlines with two goals, it was Lee Rollason, who for the second time this season, was Malvern's tormentor in chief as his aerial power continually got the better of the Malvern defence, setting up one of the goals and scoring the winner.

It looked like the home side were in for a difficult afternoon when Rollason flicked on a Mansell long throw as early as the fourth minute and Sanga was on hand to slide the ball home at the far post.

But after an uncertain opening 15 minutes Malvern came back strongly and Price twice saved superbly from leading scorer Dean Roberts and then held on to Gary Smith's point blank header.

But Town deserved their equaliser when in eventually came in the 42nd minute, Roberts was again Tipton's tormentor and when he was tripped in the box after a superb turn, Nathan Jukes comfortably beat Price from the spot.

Malvern quickly gained possession from the restart and Des Cox broke superbly down the right and his near post cross was touched home by Roberts much to the delight of the largest Langland Stadium crowd for several years.

After the break Tipton quickly established a stranglehold on the game and in the 52nd minute they grabbed an equaliser when Sanga tapped home despite appearing to be offside.

Malvern's appeals counted for nothing and Tipton continued to control things without ever really creating any clear cut chances, but they still managed to secure probably the most important goal in this season's campaign. This came in the 64th minute when a far post cross looked to have eluded everyone except Rollason, who rose high at the far post to head back across Dave Alden's goal, who could only watch in despair as the ball nestled into the net off his right hand post.

Malvern looked dejected at this point and the game rarely flowed after this, with the visitors happy to continue to slow things down.

But the home side did almost pull an equaliser out of the bag in the 87th minute when Phil Preedy cut in from the left and saw his powerful drive brilliantly tipped to safety by Price.

Town boss Neil Hunt said: "Of course we are down about this result, it was a difficult dressing room after the game and hard to say anything that could make a difference, but it has to be said we didn't defend well against their front two, both here and in the away game.

"After their opening goal we probably deserved to be in front at half time and although we are not happy about their second goal, they have beaten us twice, so we can't have too many complaints."