Deja Vu For Aurora As Umpire Misses Siren

The Age

Monday March 5, 2007

Samantha Lane

MORE sirens will be installed at Launceston's Aurora Stadium, site of last year's Fremantle-St Kilda fiasco, following another malfunction in the ground's sound system on Saturday night.

Ground manager Robert Groenewegen had a horrible sense of deja vu when several small horns failed in the NAB Cup match between Carlton and Hawthorn, and he had to resort to an emergency plan to ensure the full-time siren was heard.

He spoke to AFL grounds operation manager Jill Lindsay yesterday and recommended a further upgrading of the system before Hawthorn plays the first of four home-and-away games at Aurora on April 22.

"At the very least we'll install another bank of four horns so that will give us 12 horns in total," Groenewegen said yesterday.

"I've had a lot of feedback from people all over the place and they certainly weren't loud enough last night.

"I think what you need is at least eight horns going at their best. I think that's the minimum I'd be looking at to give me some peace of mind because I don't want to go through this again.

"We need to go for overkill I think."

When the original two-siren set-up failed so spectacularly in round five last year - the AFL Commission amended the result from a draw to a one-point Fremantle victory because St Kilda levelled the scores only after umpires failed to hear the final siren - two banks of four horns were installed. But with some of those failing on Saturday night, the overall sound was faint.

Carlton won the match by seven points and the full-time siren was never in doubt. However, at the end of the opening quarter the umpire controlling play obviously did not hear the siren for the first break. He signalled play-on after the siren sounded before quickly making a correction.

Neither Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson nor Carlton's Denis Pagan complained in their post-match news conferences, but members of both clubs' football departments said privately that the siren was too faint. At least one of the umpires made a similar observation.

Groenewegen said he suspected the problem was in the bank of horns at the city end of the ground, and at three-quarter-time he alerted timekeeper Max Harvey, who was also working the day St Kilda and Fremantle played.

"Poor old Max was there again . . . what we got them to do for the last quarter was push the actual siren, which was a bit soft, and the emergency siren, which is a different sound that goes through the PA, at the same time."

It cost $15,000 for Sirens, Horns and Hooters, a Queensland-based company recommended by the AFL, to set up the new system. There were no further problems after round five last season, but audio tests are difficult to simulate given Aurora hosts few large crowd-drawing matches.

Hawthorn chief executive Ian Robson was on the boundary line at the end of Saturday night's match and said yesterday he wasn't overly troubled by the volume of the siren.

"It certainly wasn't as loud as I can recall it from last year, but we'll have a debrief with Launceston tomorrow. I'm not concerned about it," he said.

© 2007 The Age

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