Hayden Kennedy

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Hayden Daniel Kennedy (born October 16, 1965 in Airport West, Melbourne) is an Australian rules football field umpire in the Australian Football League and is also a teacher at St Bernard's College Essendon. He has umpired 400 career games in the AFL. ^{[1] [2]}

One of the veterans on the umpire circuit, Kennedy has umpired five AFL Grand Finals since debuting in the late 1980s.^[3]

[edit] Early career

Kennedy was a very promising junior footballer with St Christophers Football Club in the Oak Park Junior Football League, a club which also produced AFL legends Simon and Justin Madden. Kennedy had his secondary schooling at St Bernard's College Essendon - a nursery to many AFL players.

Kennedy commenced a career as an umpire in the Essendon District Football League in 1983. After one season there, he was recruited into the VFL cadets squad.^{[citation needed]}

In 1986, Hayden Kennedy umpired the under 19 VFL grand final, and by 1987 had been promoted to the senior list. At this level he umpired the VFL reserves and country football matches.

[edit] Career in the Australian Football League

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Kennedy began umpiring in the Australian Football League in 1988, with a game between the North Melbourne Kangaroos and the Carlton Blues ^[4]. Kennedy’s partner on the day was a fellow 300 game umpire Peter Cameron.

In the 1995 AFL season, Kennedy umpired in all 21 weeks of Home and Away games, and a further 4 weeks of finals. He was the first umpire to achieve this in 38 years, and the 11th field umpire to do so. ^[5]

His first Grand Final, Carlton versus Geelong, was shared with boundary umpire Allan Cook. Both had been field umpires together on the cadet squad at the beginnings of their careers and both reached the pinnacle of achievement on the same day having followed very different paths.

Since that first Grand Final breakthrough, Kennedy went from strength to strength, umpiring Grand Finals in 1997, 1998 and 2000 as well as taking part in every finals series. Other prestige appointments and honours have also been attained, including three State of Origin appointments and being named All Australian Umpire in 1997. He attained Life Membership of the AFL Umpires’ Association in 1993.

After reaching the milestone of 300 games in 2002, he qualified for a life membership with the AFL. At that stage he had umpired 294 premiership season games, as well as 22 pre-season matches and 3 State of Origin games. ^[6]

In 2006 he umpired the controversial match between St. Kilda and Fremantle, along with Matthew Nicholls and Michael Vozzo. He umpired his 400th match on June 8, 2007 between Essendon versus West Coast at Telstra Dome.^[7] and was quickly catching Rowan Sawers in the umpiring record books.

He finally surpassed his former colleague on September 8, 2007 when he umpired in the first elimination final between Hawthorn and Adelaide at the Telstra Dome to break the 410 game record held by Sawers.

Hayden is married to wife Maree and resides in Essendon with their 3 children.

[edit] Footnotes