Hak: Battle was as tough as we feared
Hakan Hayrettin felt Maidstone’s win over Bath was one of their toughest games of the season.
The Stones extended their unbeaten league run to 12 matches - a feat last achieved in the 2013/14 season - with a 2-1 success last Saturday.
The visitors, managed by Hayrettin’s former Leyton Orient team-mate, Jerry Gill, caused problems for the secondplaced Stones, whose win moved them three points behind National South leaders Dorking.
Jack Barham gave them a halftime lead and Joan Luque added the second but Bath were always in the game, pulling one back in the last 10 minutes through Elliott Frearr.
“It was a tough game and for the last two weeks me and Terry (Harris, No.2) have been saying they’re a very underrated team,” said boss Hayrettin, who takes his side to play-off hopefuls Eastbourne this Saturday.
“The results have been inconsistent but they’re a good team and they caused us problems.
“But at this stage of the season we worry about the points and we got the three points.
“Did we deserve to win? Maybe, I thought we slightly edged it.
“Me and Terry were worried about this game for weeks.
“He sent me a message, their manager, he’s a personal friend of mine, I played with him at Leyton Orient. He said we’ll go toe-to-toe and that’s exactly what he did.
“He got it tactically right, he wasn’t scared of the way we play, he tried to stop us from playing but we got the breaks and scored when we needed to to win the game.
“For us, we grinded out a result, we dug deep, we could have had a couple more.
“Sometimes it’s difficult when you play against teams like Bath who tactically are astute.
“Tactically they played a smart game but we won because we utilised the ball a little bit quicker.”
Victory completed an excellent week for Hayrettin after signing a new 18-month contract.
The news went down well with supporters and the manager said: “I’m touched by the reaction.
“Since I’ve been here I’ve always said the support is important to me.
“I didn’t want to take away from what the players were doing.
“Let them take the accolades for winning but when the time’s right I’ll go and show my love and I did that at Christmas.
“We are in the business end of the season now, February onwards is the business end of the season for us and we’ve got 17 cup finals.”
Maidstone visit Tonbridge in the Kent Senior Cup on Tuesday.