Assistant manager Cooper praises "monumental" efforts of players and staff after win at Maidenhead

The win was achieved without manager Chris Millington, who has undergone an operation and looks set to miss games against Braintree and Wealdstone, as well as the win at Maidenhead, which came thanks to Florent Hoti's second-half goal.

"He's OK, he's a proud and private man so the news of him being unwell being made public is probably his worst nightmare really," Cooper said on the Town boss.

"But he's recovering. I'm led to believe he was able to get a feed of the game on National League TV and watch it from hospital.

"I'm hoping he'll be discharged soon and can recover and rest with his family.

"Clearly, someone's health comes first. We were gutted to learn of the news when it came through.

"But the best thing we could do was approach everything in the same way, all of us step up, players and staff, and that's what we've done this week.

"I can't thank the players and staff for what they've done in a bit of adversity, but that's what we're about, we've got a strong bond and togetherness.

"It's obviously pleasing he's had a successful proceedure and hopefully he has a speedy recovery."

Cooper said he was made aware of the situation at the start of this week.

"We'd already planned to rest on Monday after the schedule we'd had, so we trained on Tuesday and then on Thursday we addressed the players, with clarity, with an update of what was going on, everything that was expected of them," he said.

"When the initial call was made, we were able to have a brief chat and I was made aware that, if what was anticipated to happen later in the week happens, these were his thoughts.

"But he's a brilliant man and he just gave me full autonomy to do what we thought was right for the club.

"He said there'd be no communication during the game, but I know him really well, we've done 115, 120 games together, so I know how he views the game and how he wants to set his teams up, so we just worked towards a clear, one game plan of how to get points at Maidenhead.

"We know it's a pretty unique fixture in how they play and their style, and we know we haven't played well here in recent years."

On stepping into the manager's shoes, Cooper said: "You just have to be ready.

"When I took the role, I spoke to some mates and people in the game who are assistant managers at a higher level, and they said you need to be the assistant, that's the main thing, assist and be there ready for the manager.

"But you need to prepare behind-the-scenes that something like this might happen, whether it's a suspension, which has happened obviously, or illness, you need to be ready to step up.

"So the minute I got the call, it was 'OK, no problem, crack on'.

"I've probably not got back to as many people as I normally do in terms of returning calls and messages.

"I had a brief call with the manager before we left to come to the ground.

"The pressure and stress has been taken off by the quality of the people you work with and the players, who've just been monumental in their efforts to get around it, to make sure all the prep was nailed on.

"I just asked gfor 100 per cent buy-in and committment for Milly, and they've done it."

Cooper added: "From the first minute we addressed the players on the training pitch, I just got a sense that it brought us closer and everybody was on board with what we wanted to do.

"Steve Nichol has stepped up to support us from the academy, and everyone else has just stepped up and made sure we were as organised, ready and prepared as we normally are."

On the match itself, Cooper said: "We didn't come here to just try and scrape a 1-0 win, we wanted to be better on the ball and create more chances.

"One thing you've got to be able to do here is absorb pressure with the way they start.

"We knew with the results they'd had and watching their games back this week, they come at you fast, they create chances, they score early, put you under pressure and they're great at seeing games out.

"So we just needed to manage the game.

"The most pleasing part is, large elements of the game plan were to be really well organised and run ourselves int o the ground when we didn't have the ball, but once that initial flurry finished, to then settle down and play a bit more and be braver on the ball.

"And I thought we did that a lot better coming up to the end of the first-half without really having the quality to create chances.

"We looked to move it around, nullify what they were trying to do.

"Second-half we grew in confidence and maybe had that little extra to us where we thought 'no, we can play' and had a bit more controlled possession and put them on the back foot more.

"I'd love to have created more clear-cut chances, but I'm fully respectful of how hard a place it is to come and get three points."

Cooper admitted Town rode their luck at times in the game.

"I think you need to with the quality they've got, they have good wingers who are really tricky, can unbalance you and get balls in," he said.

"They've got the long throw as well but we earned the right to play, we did the dirty work well and got first contacts.

"We just didn't probably tidy up enough, get possession of the ball and get our possession game going as well as we wanted first-half.

"We did that much better in the second, but when you come here, you know you're going to be battling and that's what I asked of the lads, to compete for everything, get the second balls, try and get some momentum and tempo, quieten the crowd and I was pleased with that."

On the injury to Adam Alimi-Adetoro that saw him come off in the second-half, Cooper said: "It happened right in-front of us, a really big clash, 50-50 challenge.

"Initially he was assessed for a head injury, which was fine and then we decided to pull him, just precautionary.

"Jo Cummings has been training really well recently, great attitude and application to want to play after his stint out.

"I just felt it was an opportunity for him to come in and it was great for him to put the ball down the line for another substitute, Max, to get onto and help set up the winning goal."