CIARAN Long celebrated his 500th English Premier League game with a goal and the man of the match award, as the Herd beat the Sheffield Steeldogs 5-3.

The scoreline was a lot closer than the game itself, as the Yorkshire side scored twice in the last two minutes of the contest.

The match started very evenly with Sheffield’s Arnoldas Bosas and Liam Kirk looking very dangerous.

Macaulay Heywood should have given the Steeldogs the lead, but Tomas Hiadlovsky gloved his shot over the bar As the period got past its halfway stage the Bison started to dominate and Vanya Antonov scored the opening goal at 13:10. This was after a lovely inter change of passes with Dan Davies.

The same player doubled the advantage after a long pass from goalie Tomas Hiadlovsky found Davies and he was able to release Antonov to fire past James Hadfield.

The first Bison powerplay of the second period saw Hiadlovsky called into action to deny Kirk and then a super long pass from the Herd goalie sent Derek Roehl clear, but he was denied by an excellent save from Hadfield.

The Steeldogs then opened their account as Bosas fired home at 35:57, but 21 seconds later the Bison restored their two goal advantage as Long slotted home.

The Herd made it 4-1 within the first two minutes of the final session as Tomas Karpov scored from the left wing.

Soon after, Heywood decided to pick a fight with Bison’s Declan Balmer. This proved to be a non contest as Balmer swiftly put his man down.

At this point, popular British shot stopper Dan Weller-Evans took over from Hiadlovsky and was soon tested by Thomas Relf.

The Bison added their fifth goal of the night on the powerplay as Joe Rand scored his first goal since returning to the team. He tipped home a blue line shot from Roehl.

Within a minute, Sheffield were given their own powerplay which they converted from Kirk and then with 12.5 seconds left, Heywood scored the Steeldogs third, but it was all too late to deny the home side their fourth home win on the trot.

Tonight, the Bison travel to Shropshire to face league leaders the Telford Tigers.

They won 3-0 in Bracknell last night, with former Herd man Jon Baston registering a 28 shot shut-out on his debut.