Hendon showed fantastic heart and spirit on a gloomy day for the club by twice coming from behind to beat Wingate & Finchley 4-3 at a raid-soaked Earlsmead. With manager Gary McCann absent on compassionate leave, Scott Cousins and Freddie Hyatt took joint charge of the team, though the match went ahead only after three inspections from the match referee.

Mark Kirby and Finnbar Robins made way for Sam Flegg and Dean Cracknell as Hendon looked to bounce back from the defensive nightmare of the 5-5 draw against Harrow Borough on Boxing Day. Well, the defending was better, but only by a tiny bit!

The Greens could have gone behind as early as the ninth minute when Rob Laney smashed a shot which beat Joe Wright but bounced back into play from the crossbar. Eight minutes later, a carbon copy of too many recent goals conceded resulted in the Blues - clad in orange - taking the lead.

It started with a Hendon attack which broke down. The ball was played forward to Tommy Tejan-Sie and when it arrived at the feet of Billy Healey despatched it clinically.

In the 25th-minute, things got even worse for Hendon when Leon Soloman doubled the Wingate & Finchley advantage. The Greens really should have cleared the danger on two or three occasions, but when the ball came to Soloman, he scored with a powerful angled drive.

Five minutes later the scores were level and deja vu was the order of the day. Adam Wallace scored both goals, beating the offside to trap to shoot past Bobby Smith. The only difference was that Wesley Fonguck got the assist for the goal after 27 minutes and Kezie Ibe the one after 30.

Last season, the two Ryman League matches between the clubs saw Wingate & Finchley score around five minutes into the second half and it happened again. Hendon had three goes at clearing a right wing Wingate & Finchley corner, but the ball ended up at the feet of Daniel Brown - the son of former Hendon and England Non-League international Dereck Brown - and his strike from the left angle of the penalty area gave Wright no chance.

There was more than a hint of good fortune about Hendon's equaliser in the 64th minute. Fonguck's diagonal pass forward was guided into the net by Ibe, but he looked to be a good yard offside when the ball was played forward – and half a dozen yards in front of the last defender when he touched the ball.

For about 10 minutes after that, Wingate & Finchley were on top and Healey was denied by a brilliant Wright save. However, the pendulum swung back in Hendon's favour, just after Ryan Gondoh had taken over from Sam Murphy.

The decisive moment came in the 82nd minute. Wallace saw Ibe peeling away from his marker and played a perfectly-weighted, angled pass towards him. Ibe took a touch and knocked the ball past Smith before being clattered by a combination of Smith and Ola Sogbanmu. It proved to be Ibe's final contribution of the match, but it could not have been more important.

Holding onto the lead, instead of striker Ben Pattie coming on, it was the more experience and defensively minded Tony Taggart and the Greens did what they had to seal the points.

Hyatt said after the game, "This was a whole-hearted performance from everyone involved today.

"Despite going two goals down, we fought back in the first half, and we did it again in the second half when we went 3-2 behind.

"We showed great mettle."