"It definitely feels like two points dropped," says disappointed Millington after Town's draw at Maidstone

Mani Dierseruvwe came off the bench to put Town ahead before Roarie Deacon's late leveller.

"It definitely feels like two points dropped, but we've got to be honest and admit that Maidstone probably deserved a point, more through our lack of know-how once we've gone 1-0 up," said the Halifax boss.

"If we're playing that game at home, on a slick grass pitch at The Shay where you can control large portions of possession, then the way we played after scoring the goal would be the right way to do it.

"But given we're on a very sticky, dry 3G pitch where the ball doesn't move half as well as it dies on grass, we needed to play over bigger spaces and look to get in the spaces in-behind them, and we didn't do that anywhere near enough after going 1-0 up.

"Had we done that, I would fully expect us to be sitting here talking about a victory."

Millington said his team only had themselves to blame for not taking all three points.

"Absolutely, it was disappointing," he said.

"We've made substitutions to try and stretch it, try to carry more of a goal threat, which has worked by bringing Mani on.

"But other than that we've not done enough to try and build territory and build pressure in-behind.

"Luke Summerfield's played a great through ball in the last few minutes, which resulted in a throw deep in their half, which we should have been doing much more and much earlier in the game."

Millington said Maidstone's 3G pitch had a big influence on the game.

"It'll be the same when we play Bromley at their place, long balls sitting up when they bounce, lots of transitions, there aren't many passages of play when teams link together eight, ten, 12 or more passes, and that's one of the problems playing on 3G pitches," he said.

"We've got to learn to do that better. Had we done, then we would have won the game.

"We tried to on a number of occasions, but not with enough purpose or quality to get us up the pitch, it's just come straight back.

"I feel for the centre-halves in particular, who've scrapped for everything, had to defend the channels, defend long balls and win headers all day.

"They haven't been given the respite they deserved by the rest of the team playing well enough in the opposition half."

Maidstone's equaliser was another goal this season that Town have conceded from a set-piece.

"I'm not particularly worried about that in this case because I think we've defended a good number of set-pieces very well," Millington said.

"The bigger problem is we kept inviting pressure, leading to us having to defend a large number of set-pieces, and if you have to defend an awful lot of set-pieces, free-kicks and corners, then sooner or later the opposition are going to score one, and that's what happened.

"I'd prefer to look at the fact that we defended a lot of set-pieces very well, it's the other aspects of our play that have been our undoing."

Despite it feeling more like a defeat, Millington could take some positives from the match.

"Any point on the road's a good point," he said.

"My feelings right now, immediately after the game, I think will change as the journey home begins because this is a hard place to come.

"They have conceded a lot of goals but they've also scored a lot, so we're not the only ones to concede against them, and they'll certainly upset teams, especially at home because it is such a difficult place to come and play when the conditions are dry like this.

"We'll probably feel like it's a good point on the road and building on the positive performance against York.

"The disappointment is we believe we're better than Maidstone and we believe that when we're playing as well as we did against York, we can beat anyone in the league.

"Clearly we've got to aspire to be beating teams like Maidstone, home or away."

Town certainly didn't produce a performance anywhere near as good as the one in their win against York though.

"It's a very different game playing on a surface like this, neither team gets the opportunity to move the ball about," Millington said.

"On a good surface, against a team who look to move the ball, shift the ball, whether they're direct or more possession-based, you've got an opportunity to force errors, force opportunities to win the ball back.

"Then once you do that, you're playing on a surface where you get the opportunity to keep the ball for periods.

"We want to be that team, a team who, when we win it back, we keep possession for a period and control the game with the ball.

"These surfaces don't allow for that a great deal, unless there's been a downpour, there's a bit of water on them and they're a bit slick, then you're just never going to get that type of game.

"We've got to accept that and be able to deal with it.

"I've said to the boys, it's preparation for those who've never been to Bromley because they can expect more of the same there.

"We've just got to be better in our decision-making and maybe amend our style of play a bit more to make sure we're professional enough to get three points next time."

Millington made three changes to his starting line-up, with Jordan Keane missing out due to an ongoing foot injury.

"Keano's been playing with an injury for two or three weeks and we felt that the two upcoming games on 3G were an opportunity to investigate that further and try and fix it.

"We'll know more next week on his situation.

"Milli Alli and Festus Arthur are both young lads who are learning how to be professional footballers, and have made some mistakes in the run-up to this game that meant, culturally, we had to make changes.

"But we're in the fortunate position of having Jordan Slew and Tom Clarke ready to step-in and prepared to come into the game and do their job straight away."

When asked if he was referring to off the pitch rather than on the pitch mistakes, Millington said: "Mistakes in terms of their preparation for the game which we can't ignore and we have to deal with quickly."

On the injured Matty Warburton, Millington said: "He's starting running so he'll progress throughout next week and hopefully be back in training in the run-up to Dagenham."

Millington expects Osayamen Osawe to be out for another couple of weeks, but said Angelo Capello is now back running after his injury.