THE BASINGSTOKE Bison booked their place in the EPL Cup final, thanks to a brilliant 6-4 victory over the Manchester Phoenix on Thursday night to win 8-7 on aggregate.

The Herd will now face either the Slough Jets or Guildford Flames, with their second leg of their semi scheduled for Wednesday March 2, with the Jets currently leading 8-4.

The Bison trailing by one goal going into the second-leg, which was soon wiped out as Viktor Kubenko scored early on.

The Herd then went in the front in the tie overall thanks to a strike from Callum Best.

Manchester opened their account from Curtis Huppe only for Ondrej Lauko to reply.

A minute late, Stephen Wallace reduced the Bison’s lead to one goal and levelled the semi on aggregate.

However, another Mindy Kieras blue line special, to add to his two in the first leg made it 4-2 at the first buzzer and with 40 minutes to go Basingstoke led 6-5.

After the break, the visitors doubled their lead at 24:29 thanks to Ollie Bronnimann.

The home side hit back from Joe Miller who made the most of a lucky bounce to net as the score on the night moved onto 5-3.

The Bison then gave themselves even more breathing space as Lauko tipped home a Chinn blue liner.

In a tense final period the visitors ran into penalty trouble in the final five minutes as Ondrej Lauko was joined in the sin bin by Kieras.

Manchester made the most of the two man advantage as Tony Hand scored to narrow the aggregate lead to one and set up a grandstand finish.

However, despite pulling their netminder 43 seconds from time the Phoenix were unable to send the tie into overtime and the Bison had recorded another memorable victory.

See Monday’s Gazette for the full report and reaction.