Newly appointed AFL Hall of Famer, Hayden Kennedy, has revealed his involvement in one of the most controversial football games in recent history; after claiming he heard the siren at York Park initially before chaos erupted and ‘Sirengate' was born.
Kennedy is one of the AFL's most accomplished umpires, stating he has umpired 83 members of the Hall of Fame and officiated in five Grand Finals, including the 1997 decider.
One match in particular, St Kilda and Fremantle's clash in Round 5, 2006, stood out as the most controversial of the 495 games Kennedy had umpired.
The Dockers led by a point when the final siren sounded, but the siren wasn't heard by any of the umpires. Play continued for 10 seconds before Saint Steven Barker rushed a behind to tie the scores.
Before the point was voided, Barker was given another free kick after being infringed against by a late bump from Fremantle's Daniel Gilmore and proceeded to kick another behind to win the match. Four days later, Fremantle was handed a one-point victory by the AFL commission after public protest.
When asked by Australian Football Hall of Fame host Gerard Whateley about whether or not he heard the Sirengate siren, Kennedy responded with “Yes! Yes, yes, yes I did”.
"I've blown my whistle and I just race down to where the incident occurred- I said to Matt Nichols: ‘I've heard the siren.'”
After Nichols annulled the score, “He's come back and there's mayhem. Then he said to me, "Oh, but I've paid a free kick for a free after disposal.”
"I just walk away thinking, we're up s*** creek here, aren't we?"
Without taking away any blame from the controversy, Kennedy also claimed that it was a procedural area from the siren operator that helped cause it.
"The rules of the game said that you keep the hand on the siren until it gets heard by a field umpire and that didn't happen," he said.
"I heard the sound for the briefest period of time- I'd describe it as someone's reaching over to hit a button and their elbow hits the button oh so briefly.
"But for the next 10 seconds, I was on tenterhooks, because I'm thinking 'it had to be the siren. It was a really soft one during the day anyway."
On Tuesday night, Kennedy, who claimed to be “one of the most fortunate people involved in our game”, was one of six AFL greats to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
