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Housemates Joan Luque and Regan Booty are becoming quite the double act at Maidstone.
The pair are sharing digs in the town after summer moves to the Gallagher and have become good pals.
They’re forging a big understanding on the pitch, too, combining to good effect in United’s 4-2 win over Hemel Hempstead last weekend.
“They’re good lads,” said Stones boss Hakan Hayrettin.
“When Luque first came in last season I was trying to suss him out and he’s a fantastic young man with a great personality.
“He’s a great character, he’s very bubbly around the place, and he’s joy to work with. Regan’s the same.
“It’s not affected him one bit having to leave his roots up north and move down here.
“He’s settled in well, he’s well-liked and I keep using the word professional - that’s exactly what he is, and Luque is and many others.
“They get on well and there’s a good spirit among the boys.
“I think we’ve done exceptionally well in a short space of time.”
Maidstone trailed twice against Hemel but won their National South opener thanks to Luque’s double and goals from Booty and substitute Christie Pattisson.
They visit Chelmsford tomorrow, a fixture they lost 1-0 last season after missing two penalties.
Hayrettin wants Maidstone to be easy on the eye but says they need to learn from the Hemel game.
He said: “There was loads of positive stuff in the first game but there’s also stuff we need to improve on.
“We want to be entertaining but we don’t want to be coming from behind to try and win every week.
“We know as a group we didn’t do as well as we could have in the first half and that could be down to a number of reasons.
"We didn’t do the basics right, we didn’t squeeze and we didn’t play at the tempo we want but it was also the first time some of our players have played in front of nearly 2,000 people and that can be daunting at first, especially when you're at a new club.
“Teams coming to Maidstone treat it as their biggest game of the season and they raise their game - we have to be able to deal with that.
“We showed good character and personality to come from behind twice but it’s one game at a time.
“We’ve got to take what we did well into the Chelmsford game.
“We think we know how they’re going to set up and we’ll try to emphasise to our players what they need to do to win the game.”
