Former Trojans star Alex Danson was on target to help England's women's hockey team maintain their unbeaten start at the Commonwealth Games with a 5-0 win over Malaysia – but acknowledged the next challenge won't be so straightforward.

England were always expected to brush aside Malaysia, who they've never lost to and hadn't played since a similar convincing win four years ago at Delhi 2010, but will face a much stiffer test on Monday against Australia, runners-up at the recent World Cup in Holland.

After their initial stubborn resistance, Ellie Watton broke Malaysia's resolve, steering home a penalty corner in the 18th minute.

But for all England's domination of possession, they didn't double their advantage until Giselle Ansley swept home a penalty corner on the stroke of half-time.

Malaysian keeper Farah Ayuni Yahya did her best to keep the scoreline respectable until second-half strikes from Sophie Bray, Danson and Hollie Webb completed the win.

"It was always going to be a tough game against a side that you don't come up against very often. It's just great to get some goals and get the three points," said Southampton-born Danson.

"I'm just excited about Australia now, I love being an underdog. We are going in confident though. We've had a tough few weeks but we never lost our sense of belief.

“We are very tight as a unit and we've trained exceptionally hard coming into these Games. We will come out and play our game and the result will look after itself.

"We need to be clinical in defence and we need to win our corners – which seem to be working now – and take our chances.

“It's going to be a tight match and it's going to be fast. They are scoring lots of goals but we've got lots of threats too and we've got some goals under our belt too."

Commonwealth Games England (CGE) leads and manages the participation of the Team England at the Commonwealth Games and Commonwealth Youth Games. We work with sports, Sponsors and Sport England to support the development of athletes and their sports, and to achieve success at Games-time.