MALVERN Town made it four league games without a win after they threw away the lead to draw 1-1 against mid-table Wolverhampton Casuals on Saturday.
Top scorer Bryan Craven bagged the opening goal of the West Midlands Regional Premier Division encounter only for Steve Douglas to hit back for the hosts five minutes before the break.
Craven had earlier missed a penalty for Les Jones’ men as they failed to put away a number of chances to leave them sitting in sixth place.
After just ten minutes Malvern were handed a glorious opportunity to open the scoring when Dan Herbert was brought down in the box but Craven’s tame spot-kick was pushed away by Steve Booth.
An entertaining 20 minutes saw the Casuals strike an effort which bounced off the bar before Herbert glanced two headed chances narrowly wide of the target.
The visitors’ probing would be rewarded and it was Craven who redeemed himself after 24 minutes when Booth dropped a Lee Hooper free kick and the striker nipped in to fire home his 11th goal of a fruitful campaign.
It should have been 2-0 just four minutes later but Herbert somehow fired over from ten yards out after Sam Rathbone had squared a perfect ball across the box.
And those missed chances proved costly five minutes before the break. Douglas made a marauding run up the left hand side and sent over a cross-shot which beat Neil Hacking at his near post.
The visitors did not let the interval upset their rhythm as Rathbone sent in a teasing ball which nobody could get on the end of before a carbon-copy delivery from Ben Hayes narrowly avoided everyone in claret and blue.
With just 20 minutes left on the clock, Hacking kept his side on level terms when he came out quickly to prevent Andre Brown from putting Wolverhampton ahead.
There was to be one more golden opportunity for Jones’ side after Hooper screwed an effort wide, as the same man received a lovely cross from Hayes with five minutes to go, but his contact was weak and Booth managed to claw the effort off the line as the points were shared.