Hendon's unbeaten run stretching back to the beginning of December continued on Boxing Day, but they Greens will feel disappointed not to have taken all three points from their Ryman League Premier Division local derby against Wingate & Finchley. With nine players missing because of injury or suspension, Hendon could not take advantage of playing for almost 20 minutes against 10 men after the Blues had Murat Karagul red-carded.

James Parker (foot), Elliot Brathwaite (knee), Lee O’Leary (also knee), Jamie Busby (ankle), Carl McCluskey (groin), Casey Maclaren (knee), Dave Diedhiou (suspended), Aaron Morgan (foot) and Isaiah Rankin (thigh) were the nine absentees, but Hendon also brought Greg Ngoyi into the starting line-up at the expense of Elliott Godfrey, giving two out and out strikers. On the bench were new goalkeeping cover Lee Pearce, Michael Lewis, Godfrey, Belal Aite-Ouakrim and Michael Peacock.

Once again, Hendon were very slow out of the starting blocks and this time they were made to pay. Already a free-kick from a dangerous position and a corner had been dealt with before the Greens lost possession in the eighth minute and Scott Cousins had to concede a corner to deny Tony Burke the chance of getting in a cross.

The ball was curled in and three Wingate & Finchley players suddenly made unchecked runs into space. One of those was Matt Mitchell, and he glanced his free header past the helpless Berkley Laurencin to score his first goal for the Blues on his second appearance.

More sloppy play by Hendon gifted the ball to Mark Henry after 13 minutes. The midfielder carried the ball forward and let fly from 20 yards out. Luckily for the Greens, and unfortunately for the visitors, the ball bent away from the goal and missed the post by a few inches. It would have been a spectacular goal and a blow from which Hendon would have been unlikely to recover.

Instead, the Greens started to get a toe-hold in the game. The passing from the centre of midfield was not very good and wide players Jerome Federico and Darren Currie were starved of the ball and the opportunity to test the mettle of full-backs Kieran Street and Marc Weatherstone, while Danny Nielsen and Bobby Aisien certainly had the better of Ngoyi and the out of sorts Elliott Charles, both of whom were denied the sort of passes they need to show off their class.

Nevertheless, in the 23rd minute, both players came close to equalising. First Charles wriggled one way and then the next before shooting low at Bobby Smith, who could not hold onto the shot. The ball spilled away from him and Ngoyi was quickest to react to the situation. Smith, however, recovered and blocked away Ngoyi’s shot with his body.

Hendon's innovative set-piece corners were also not working particularly well and one such move resulted in Ryan Wharton and James Fisher being isolated on the opposite wing and they could not fashion an opening - or even keep the ball in play.

Just before half-time, a run from Federico was halted by a rash challenge by Street. It would have given Hendon a real chance of creating a chance to equalise, but the cynical foul received the correct sanction: a yellow card, though fans behind the goal were screaming for it to be a red one. The free-kick, however, came to nothing as Ross Parmenter headed the ball clear.

The second half was dominated by Hendon, whose players had received a roasting in the dressing room from a very unhappy management team. The Greens certainly took control of the match, forcing Wingate & Finchley into some desperate defending, but there was always a yellow-shirted player in just the right time to quell a number of dangerous situations.

They did get a stroke of good fortune in the 64th minute when a beautiful cross by Currie was met by the late-arriving Ngoyi. His flicked header beat Smith all ends up, but the ball struck the top of the crossbar and bounced away for a goal kick. It was a warning to Wingate & Finchley, one they didn't heed.

Four minutes later, Charles played a neat pass into the path of Kevin Maclaren who, for the fourth or fifth time in the match found himself well-positioned on the edge of the Wingate & Finchley penalty area. On one occasion in the first half, he had tried a shot, which flew high over the bar; this time, however, he played an astute ball into space behind Nielsen.

Ngoyi timed his run perfectly to reach the ball clear of the Blues skipper. Smith came racing off his line, but he was unable to do a thing about Ngoyi's deft flick of the ball which sent it past the goalkeeper and into the bottom corner of the net. He was turning in celebration long before the ball reached the goalline, confident - correctly - that Weatherstone would be unable to stop it.

Chances at either end, however, remained at a premium, mainly because Wharton and Frank Sinclair had dominated Mitchell and Karagul, while Aisien and Nielsen, in the main, continued to hold sway over Ngoyi and Charles. The two team's pair of full-backs were equally dominant with neither the Blues' Gary Burrell nor Burke able to get the better of James Archer and Cousins, while Street and Weatherstone continued to thwart most of the work from Federico and Currie.

That said, a minute after Hendon's equaliser, Laurencin was forced to make a save from a 20-yard drive which dipped and swerved just in front of him. The goalkeeper did well to get his body behind the ball and although the ball did bounce away from him, it was only by a foot and Laurencin regathered before a Wingate & Finchley player could react. It was the only real save Laurencin had to make in the half.

Lewis came on for Federico with 17 minutes of normal time to go, but he is sadly lacking in match fitness, having played less than 90 minutes in a handful of substitute appearances so far this season.

Five minutes later, the match flared up. A couple of rash challenges, one by the increasingly frustrated Karagul went unpunished - or an advantage was played on the edge of the Hendon penalty area. Either way, Wharton had the ball, until he was scythed down by Karagul's awful tackle.

Wharton lay on the ground in obvious pain, and once order was restored, and as Wharton was led slowly to the touchline, the referee showed Karagul a red card.

Just after Wharton returned, gingerly, to the fray, Wingate replaced the goalscorer Mitchell with Leon Smith, the early-season Ryman League leading scorer, but looking for his first League goal since the beginning of November. Hendon then replaced one Elliott for another, Godfrey replacing Charles.

As the game moved into the stoppage time, Sinclair made a superb tackle to stop a run from Smith. The forward stayed down injured, but the referee saw no foul.

As Smith was receiving treatment Aite-Ouakrim took over from Ngoyi and he had a great chance to win the game for Hendon two minutes into the nine additional ones played by the referee. A corner was not properly cleared and Aite-Ouakrim pounced on the loose ball, firing powerfully at the partially covered goal.

He struck the ball too well, however, and it sailed high over the crossbar. He held his head in his hands aware that the chances of victory had gone.

"We have dropped too many home points against teams we should be beating if we are serious about making the playoffs," said a very dissatisfied Hendon manager Gary McCann.

"Our passing was not good enough and I told the players this. Two or three were nowhere near where I expected them to be today."