Hakan Hayrettin didn’t care how the points came as Maidstone ended their winless run.

Joan Luque scored the only goal from a disputed penalty, while the Stones came under a fair bit of second-half pressure against a Chippenham side who were unbeaten on the road this season.

But Maidstone, who’d failed to score in six of their last seven matches in league and cup, got the job done to move up to eighth place in National South.

Chippenham were unhappy with the penalty decision, with handball the verdict as Spencer Hamilton blocked Jerome Binnom-Williams’ first-half strike.

Soft or not, boss Hayrettin wasn’t complaining, given some of the decisions that have gone against his side recently.

“Was it a handball?” said Hayrettin. “I didn’t see where I was but the referee’s in a better view so if he’s stuck his hand up and the rules are the rules, it’s a penalty.

“But it’s about time we had a bit of luck, we’ve had things go against us with referees so we’ll take that.

“It was very tense, very nervous near the end, maybe that will take us to where we want to be in terms of our mentality. And we won, which is the most important thing.”

Victory saw Maidstone build on a creditable goalless draw at Havant last weekend, a result achieved despite being without 10 players.

Sam Corne and George Fowler returned against Chippenham in the only two changes.

The players kept their heads up, amid the poor run, and got their rewards.

Hayrettin said: “We did ever so well at Havant, where we could have nicked it, we hit the post, and today was a completely different type of performance and I’m thoroughly pleased for them.

“I’ve said to them time and time again, when you play at home, don’t let the (size of the) crowd affect you, and some of them were being affected by the crowd, especially when there were slight moans and groans, and they need to overcome that.

“I’ve never once doubted the support, if they’ve got anything to say they can direct it at me, which is fine.

“I’m trying to keep the pressure off them, (the players) which we did today, we got a result, it was tight game, a difficult game, a team who went to Dartford and did ever so well and got a point.

“I know their manager personally, we were at Cambridge United together many years ago and they’ve got some good players, some good loans, and we did well.

"We kept a clean sheet, I thought our back four was immense and so was our goalkeeper again.

“No one likes to go to work and not have a smile on their face.

“I’ve kept their spirits up as much as I can and today was a result of that.

“However we won, we won. Did we deserve to win? Probably, yes, because we defended unbelievably well in the last 10/15 minutes.

“Did we deserve to win because we got the penalty? Yes, we did, we forced the issue.

“That’s going to even itself up over the course of a season but we’ll take that today because we’ve had some bad luck with refereeing decisions.”

• Report: Maidstone 1-0 Chippenham

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