Hendon's interest in the London Senior Cup ended at the quarter-final stage as the holders were comprehensively beaten by Wingate & Finchley at the Abrahams Stadium.

A flu bug, injuries and unavailability left the Greens with nine players absent - six of them midfielders - and only 14 to pick from, so Junior Lewis, Joshua Adusei and Kambo Smith were named as the substitutes and Carl McCluskey made his first start for a long time.

That, however, was no excuse for disappointing and ill-disciplined performance from the Greens, especially against a team which had seen five players dismissed in their previous match two days previously.

The opening goal came in the 14th minute when Marc Weatherstone powered home a close-range header as the Hendon marking left him with a free run at the ball.

More sloppy defending by Hendon allowed Hector Mackie to double the Wingate & Finchley advantage after 31 minutes. Anthony Thomas had worked himself an opening, but his shot beat Berkley Laurencin before hitting a post. The rebound fell perfectly for Mackie who scored from close range.

Two minutes later, James Fisher felt aggrieved to have been punished for a challenge and he was shown a yellow card. Rankin weighed in with his own comments and suffered a similar fate. Whilst walking away, the forward continued chuntering, and was rewarded for his continued dissent by being shown a second yellow and a red card for good measure.

Just before half-time, Wingate & Finchley almost put the game to bed when Mackie drilled a shot from outside the penalty area. Laurencin, however, produced a brilliant save to push the ball over the crossbar.

For the first 15 minutes of the second half, Hendon took the game to the Blues, but they lacked the cutting edge to unlock the home defence.

Just before the hour mark, Wayne O'Sullivan made the game safe when he followed up good work by Mackie and Thomas with a simple finish for Wingate & Finchley's third goal.

Lewis was the first Hendon substitute to be used and his evening might have been ended prematurely soon after Ahmet Rifat's 80th-minute introduction by the Blues. The pair tangled on the Hendon left touchline and Rifat stuck his head into Lewis's face out of sight of the match officials.

Hendon's player-coach was furious and protested loudly. The referee, suddenly aware of the fracas developing went across to deal with the situation, but the two players were determined to take the matter further. Lewis ended up with a yellow card, Rifat was unpunished.

"Our discipline and performance were not good enough tonight," said a furious Hendon manager Gary McCann. "I am not going to make any excuses."