Maidstone’s 2-2 draw with Concord was just the third time all season they have conceded more than once in a league game.

United slipped eight points behind National South leaders Ebbsfleet after John Easterford’s injury-time equaliser from a corner at the Gallagher on Saturday.

And manager Jay Saunders felt they missed the experience of player-coach Jamie Coyle, who was unavailable.

Saunders said: “Coyley’s had a prior arrangement that was booked and I knew about it in pre-season. We could have done without it but unfortunately he had to go.

“We were very young today and we missed that little bit of leadership maybe at the back from Coyley, and that’s taking nothing away from Callum Davies and Manny Parry, but you miss his talking.

“You look at the defence and Callum Driver’s 22, Manny’s 21, Callum Davies 22, Tom Mills is the oldest at 24.

“You’ve got Joe Healy and James Rogers in midfield but after that, it’s Dan Sweeney 21, Vas Karagiannis 23, Charles Banya’s 21 and Alex Akrofi’s 21, so it was a very young side and at times we looked a bit inexperienced and our game management was poor.”

Saunders found himself using the excuse he’d been determined to steer clear of after Stones were denied a fourth win in a row.

They led 2-1 through Joe Healy and a Vas Karagiannis penalty but the manager felt the performance suffered after three weeks without a match.

He said: “It was a very open game - too open for my liking - but I thought we were flat and a bit rusty.

“I didn’t want to use the excuse of the three-week gap but it doesn’t help and I will use that.

“Even when we went 1-0 up the goal never really sparked us and that’s unusual.

“We had some good chances early on but didn’t take them and maybe that would have made a difference but Concord deserved something out of the game.

“You get yourselves 2-1 up with three minutes of injury time to go and you think the game’s won but fair play to Concord. We’ve just got to move on. It’s still four games unbeaten now.”

Saunders confirmed that Akrofi went off early in the second half with an ankle injury but with no game again next weekend the striker has time to recover.