MALVERN Town produced a dogged display without the ball to earn a well-deserved 3-1 victory over Bemerton Heath Harlequins to ease their early-season concerns.

Starting the weekend in the relegation zone, goals at the end of the first-half from Joe Bullock and Jordan Annear put them 2-0 up at the break before Jack Watts added a third 15 minutes from time to lift them up into 14th in the Southern League Division One South table.

Eder Teixeira Batista did add a third towards the end of the game from the penalty spot but it was not going to take anything from Malvern's fine performance.

"There were a lot of warriors in our team today," said co-manager Stephen Cleal at full-time.

"We stood up big and strong and did what was required and when we had to defend, we did so.

"But the main thing for me was that we asked the lads to be better off the ball and we were. We know what we can do with the ball and to be fair, we scored three really good goals.

"It was a really good performance. It was based on how well we played without the ball but also on it, we were very good."