Benony Andresson had raced through in the final seconds only to stumble on the edge of the box and lose the ball.

However, Stevenage seemed to switched off in that moment and Ben Osborn jumped into the gaggle of home defenders and goalkeeper, poking the ball into the empty net.

It gives the Hatters the edge for the return at Edgeley Park on Wednesday, and they will be going all out for another victory.

“The game’s still wide open,” said Challinor. “We’ve given ourselves a small advantage but we’ve got to make the most of that advantage at home by going and getting the next goal in the tie.

“We’ll face a really tough test and we’re not thinking about having a lead to defend, it’s a lead that we want to go and extend.

“We need to win that game and that’s what we’ll try and do.

“I don’t need to do anything to the players. They know where we’re at. They know what’s on the line for us.

“We’ve taken one step, no more than that.”

As for the late winner, he was delighted to see the ball go in after Andresson’s tumble.

“I don’t know what happened,” admitted the County boss. “It’s almost like his legs packed in on him. He looked like he’d done 90 minutes when he was running.

“His legs get tangled up and I suppose in that moment, from a defender’s perspective, you’re a little bit relieved as he was away.

“All of a sudden, he falls on the floor but thankfully for us, [Ben’s] benefited from the chaos or the melee.

“We saw the ball rolling towards the far post and I was unsure whether it was going inside or outside of it.

“Thankfully, it goes inside and our supporters behind that goal get to celebrate with the team.”

Stevenage boss Alex Revell was also upbeat, even after the calamity of the winner.

He said: “It was a disappointing goal, absolutely. We could have dealt with the initial ball a bit better and took a 0-0 but it is a mix-up on the edge of our box that shouldn’t happen.

“It can happen in football. We felt the joy [of an injury-time goal] last week and now we’ve felt the pain of it.

“We’re all disappointed of course because you want to win, you want to get a result to go into the second leg, but it doesn’t change what we need. If it was 0-0, we’d still have to go up there and win the game.

“The only thing that changes is they’ve got something to hold on to and we just have to go there and put on a performance.”