North Shields will unleash their Vase specialist Gareth Bainbridge in the second leg of their semi final at a packed Daren Persson Stadium on Saturday.

Bainbridge has scored 15 goals in the Vase this season, but he missed last week’s first leg in Wiltshire because of injury. Instead, the scoring honours went to Dean Holmes with the second half deciding goal against the Hellenic League side.

Assistant manager Andy Bowman said; “He’s become our Vase specialist, a bit like Paul Chow was at Whitley Bay. He must be close to some sort of record.

“He’s trained twice this week, and unless there’s some sort of reaction, then he’s raring to go.”

Highworth will probably bring around 200 supporters with them, but there’ll be over six times that number supporting the home side. All the 1500 tickets have been sold.

“Highworth might be better on our pitch, because they know that they’ll have to play. I’m sure our pitch will be better than theirs, which was very difficult to play on.

“But we’ll also be better than last week, and we’ll be doing our best to make our home advantage count. There’ll be a huge amount of noise and hopefully that will benefit us.

“We have to be wary that the game can turn on a daft mistake or a sending off. If we score first, then we’ll be ok, but there’s no way that we’ll be sitting on our one goal lead.” Shields will have a full squad to choose.

The winners will be at home to the winners of the other semi between Glossop and St Austell. Glossop have a 2-0 advantage going into the second leg.