Berwick face KL in Young Shield semi.

The Kirkland Carpets Berwick Bandits will race this coming Saturday night at Shielfield Park at the traditional 7.00pm start time against King's Lynn Stars in the Semi Final of the end of year play off competition, the Jack Young Shield following King's Lynn's nerve-tingling quarter final with Workington in Norfolk on Wednesday night.

The Bandits fans, riders and promotion were glued to telephones all Wednesday night awaiting the result of a match that had seen Workington 8 up after their first leg, and for a while it looked like the Comets from Cumbria were going to pull off a surprise victory, until the Stars turned on some mid match power, but even then is was far from over!

With the Lynn 5 up with 2 to go, Workington's superb reserve, Tomasz Piszcz (who hit 17 points all night) won a vital tactical ride nomination for 6 points followed home by the fast Shaun Tacey to make it a 1-8 (47-41 overall) and put the Comets back in the aggregate lead by a slender 2 points, but Oliver Allen and Tomas Topinka took 5 over Workington guest, Magnus Zetterstrom and Tacey once more to give the King's Lynn Stars the passport to meet Berwick in the Semi Finals.

"Bring on the Stars!" said a satisfied Peter Waite afterwards, "To be honest either King's Lynn or Workington would give us Bandit's a good exciting match this weekend, although I'm satisfied with the Stars getting through. We are in for more great speedway come the weekend.

"If we get through or not, it's unlikely we'll have a meeting on the 15th at home, but I feel I want to go out on a big one, as well as - we hope - the Young Shield Final should we see off King's Lynn first, so there will still be 2 or 3 meetings to go before we close for 2005."