Maidstone could have grounds to appeal George Elokobi’s red card at Chippenham.

Skipper Elokobi was dismissed for cleaning out George Rigg in the box shortly before half-time of yesterday's 1-0 defeat.

However, footage shows he was tripped by Bluebirds striker Nat Jarvis as the cross came in, knocking him off balance and sending him flying in.

Elokobi saw red, three minutes after Noah Chesmain had gone for a challenge on the same player.

The Stones left-back wins the ball but, on a wet pitch, can’t avoid catching Rigg with his studs showing.

Whatever happens, the pair can at least play against Bath on Tuesday night as red-card suspensions in National South kick in a week later.

Stones head of football John Still initially felt both decisions were correct but added: “Until you see it run back, you don’t know.”

It remained goalless at half-time with Chris Lewington saving Scott Twine’s penalty but that was the end of the Stones keeper’s afternoon, forced off with a dead leg and replaced by Jake Cole.

Maidstone put in a big shift with nine men but were beaten by Luke Haines’ 73rd-minute header.

Still said: “Second half, to a man, the boys were outstanding. I thought we did fantastic, we worked hard, we were well-organised.

“The goal was disappointing because it was a free header, where we’d been so good in there, and last 10 minutes we gave ourselves a couple of opportunities.

“I can’t ask for any more work rate-wise and organisation-wise but I can discipline-wise because it’s two sent off.

“It’s very difficult to win a football match with 11 men let alone 10 or nine.”

A half-time team-talk with nine men may well be a first for Still, even after 43 years in management.

“The first thing you’ve got to do is stay in the game for as long as you can,” he said.

“So we changed our system with three centre-halves and looked at their team and said we’re almost happy for them to cross.

“We’ve got to deal with the cross and we did deal with most things that came in, so I was pleased with that.

“The other thing we had to worry about was we had to get out quick when we won our header to stop them getting strikes at goal and, to be honest, I thought everything was good.

“We didn’t want to draw and as silly as it sounds, with 10 or 15 minutes to go, we were going to put two up if we’d still been 0-0.

“We did with Saidou Khan when we were one down. We were chasing the game a touch then and we had one or two opportunities right at the end.

“All you can do is organise, you can’t give too many instructions because people have got to play a little bit off-the-cuff, they’ve got to cover a lot of ground, but we worked tremendously hard.”

Lewington could be a doubt for Tuesday’s rearranged home game against Bath but Cole looked sharp on his return from a calf injury.

Still said: “It’s a bit of a dead leg but fortunately Coley’s fit now so he could come on.

“I was disappointed for Chris because he made a good save for the penalty.

“I called it, I’ve known Lewy for years, he’s decent with penalties.”

• Chippenham 1-0 Maidstone

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