THE Basingstoke Bison will be looking for a magnificent seventh straight win on Saturday, when they take on the visiting Manchester Phoenix.

The Herd have been in awesome form over the past two weekends, as they followed up triple header victories over Swindon, Bracknell and Guildford, with a double in their top of the table clashes with the Peterborough Phantoms.

The result of these fab five wins, is the Bison are now five points clear at the top of the English Premier League, after the first weekend of 2016.

However, the leaders are there to be shot out and first up is a dangerous looking Phoenix side who have plenty of firepower thanks to their four import forwards Stanislav Gron, Robin Kovar, Michal Satek and new signing Martin Baranek Baranek made his Manchester debut last weekend and the Czech power forward made an instant impact as he scored three times in two games.

This will be the first time he has played against by the Bison and will hope he can stop the Phoenix suffering their fifth straight loss this year against Basingstoke.

The Herd will be without British forward Alan Lack as he is on honeymoon, which the club were aware of this when they signed him.

They will await the fitness of leading goal scorer Tomas Karpov, but Canadian Joe Rand is ready to step in once again.

Jon Baston will remain in goal as Tomas Hiadlovsky suffered a new injury in training last week.

Despite the results between these sides so far this season, Bison head coach Doug Sheppard is taking nothing for granted and said:" Manchester have a short bench so their top players get a lot of ice time.

"We are playing well at the moment and I want us to carry on the way we are playing and keep our winning run going."

On Sunday night, the Herd travel to Hull looking to avenge their defeat there back in November.

The Pirates last week finally lifted themselves off the bottom of the table and are stronger now than when they last played the Bison.

Sheppard said: "It is a long trip and they are a team scrapping for every point as they want to make the play-off.

"Every game in this league is tough, but we will go there hoping to coming away with a win this time."