THE first XV of the Malvern Angels brought home a 65-0 win against Hucclecote WRFC last Sunday.

The Angels travelled to Hucclecote RFC and in the not so promising weather prepared to play against the Hucclecote team, which have been very successful in recruiting a training squad of about 20 and have also started a youth section since Malvern last played them a few months ago.

All the Malvern players were quite nervous, especially after the last game at Tewkesbury, which saw a few injuries.

The game kicked off and for the first 20 minutes or so, both teams were quite jumpy and there was very little organisation, but as the game progressed, the Malvern captain, Debbie Danby, got a good grip of the team and the Malvern play started to slow down and get into a good rhythm, which stood them in good stead for the rest of the game.

The head coach, Barry Kirby, was pleased with the result: "Even though Hucclecote have not had much playing experience, it was good to see how they had improved, but also the improvement in our own team is very good. We still need to work on starting the game in the way that we mean to play it, we seem to take a good 10 minutes or so to get going, but once it begins, things seem to run a lot better.

"A big improvement has been in player fitness, I have been running part of the sessions with dedication to personal fitness, especially sprint speed and endurance."

Player of the match went to Rachel Brannelly who was surprised, but delighted.

She said: "I was really pleased with getting player of the match, its not often the hooker gets recognition for the work they do, being right in the middle of the scrum and almost invisible, so it was really good to be appreciated."

The Malvern squad is still suffering of a lack of numbers in the senior squad, with only 15 training; the lack of substitutes does increase the pressure on all the players.

A future improvement is the introduction of the 14-17-age development squad that trains from 6pm till 8pm on the Monday nights. This means that they do some training along side the senior team and get a taste of what is to come.

From this, Malvern expect players to progress from the youth to the senior team and build up numbers in the up and coming seasons.