GRANT Rounding scored the game winning penalty shot for the Basingstoke Bison as they beat the Guildford Flames 5-4, as he returned from injury.

Also back in the Herd line-up was another British forward Aaron Connolly and he scored twice in what was well deserved victory for the home side, who were still without Matt Selby, Brandan Baird and import Tomas Karpov.

A bumper crowd once again turned up to Basingstoke Arena and they were not left disappointed as this was a true derby game.

The fans were treated to toe-to-toe fight in centre ice in the eighth minute between Bison’s Declan Balmer and Flames’ Andrew McKinney.

From this the visitors were given their first powerplay of the night, as referee Stefan Hogarth endeared himself to the home fans.

The Herd killed the powerplay, but soon after Matt Towe opened the scoring with a low shot at 10:56.

Soon after, Guildford should have had one of their imports Vladimir Kutny dismissed as he sent Andy Melachrino head first into the boards behind the Flames’ goal.

The Bison man skated off to the dressing room clearly shaken and Kutny escaped with just a two minute penalty for boarding.

The home side took advantage of the extra man as Connolly netted from close range at 12:25.

Guildford took a 2-1 lead at the end of the first period as Branislav Kvetan scored with a crisp shot from the top of the circle.

The second period proved to be one-way traffic as only a string of great saves from Flames’ netminder James Hadfield kept his side in the contest.

He was beaten at 24:16 as Joe Greener robbed Neil Liddiard and raced down the rink and fired in a shot from the left wing.

This was padded away, but the Bison forward followed up to fire home the rebound.

The Herd were very much on top and it was just amazing they only managed to draw one penalty in the second session.

They then somehow had to go on the penalty kill, as the Herd’s Connolly was called for high sticks.

However, the Guildford powerplay was as woeful as the performance of referee Hogarth and despite being a man down the home side took the lead.

Ciaran Long robbed Jez Lundin of the puck and skated down the rink and then laid the puck onto Joe Rand to score.

It was no more than the Bison deserved, but disaster struck early in the third as lovely soft pass from David Longstaff was hammered in by former Bison Danny Meyers.

The Bison then took the lead on their final powerplay of the night, as a blue line shot from Kurt Reynolds saw Connolly score from close range at 56:20.

As the game moved into its final 97 seconds, the visitors called a time out and pulled their goalie.

With the extra skater they forced an equaliser from Kutny after a goal mouth scramble.

With no further scoring in the game it went into overtime in which the Bison had the only two shots in the extra five minutes both from Long.

So the game was decided by a penalty shoot-out and Guildford were first to shoot, but Kutny could only find the pads of Skinns.

The Herd’s Rand then fired wide, before Marcus Kristoffersson with a lovely penalty shot put his side in front.

The Bison’s Long failed to get his shot away and then Skinns saved Roman Tvrdon’s effort.

This meant Greener needed to score to take the shoot-out into sudden death. The British forward did not disappoint and scored much to the delight of the home fans.

With the tension building Kvetan was the next Guildford shooter, but once again Skinns made an excellent pad save.

So it was left to Rounding to win the game and get the Bison fans back on their feet to celebrate a memorable win over their arch rivals.

Tonight (face-off 5:45pm), the Herd travel to the newly crowned league champions the Telford Tigers