Maidstone United assistant manager Rob Tuvey says the team wanted to beat Hemel Hempstead for boss Craig Fagan following his controversial red card

Maidstone used manager Craig Fagan’s red card as added motivation to beat Hemel Hempstead on Saturday.

Fagan was controversially dismissed from the dugout by referee Harry Jones after United fell behind to George Williams’ 13th-minute free-kick.

Fourth official Chad Greatorex said he’d been sent off for “leaving his technical area to confront an official”, although the visitors were puzzled, to say the least.

Fagan had questioned the award of the free-kick against Stones right-back Dermi Lusala, which led to the goal.

“I don’t quite understand it,” said assistant manager Rob Tuvey.

“I know for a fact he hasn’t sworn. Yes, he might have left the technical area but you can see how tight it is.

“You’re going to leave it with one step, so I think there has to be a look at how big those technical areas actually are.

“I’m not quite sure of the repercussions going forward, if he misses a game or not, but I think we’ll appeal if we can because he hasn’t done anything wrong, in our opinion.”

Maidstone remained a goal down at the break but were determined to get a result for their manager, who was unable to watch the rest of the game even from the stands.

And they did just that as Jayden Davis set up goals for Riley Court and Ryan Hanson in a 2-1 victory that keeps Maidstone two points behind leaders Ebbsfleet.

“We spoke about that at half-time,” said Tuvey. “The gaffer drives us on so much and he’s such a big character within what we do that, actually, with him not being there, we’ve got to do it for him.

“It was ‘let’s do it for him for a change’, so I think it’s nice to repay him, and that’s a big win.

“There’s teams that will come here all season and drop points because the pitch is not ideal and they will pose problems to a