Sherrin 2024 – Year in Review
With 2024 coming to an end, we thought we’d take a look back at one of the busiest and most exciting years at Sherrin in recent memory.
Before the footy season had even kicked off, in March we made the huge announcement that we were back as the official ball of the SANFL, and we couldn’t have been more excited to be back in South Australia in 2024.
Between the AFL and AFLW, Sherrin had its fingerprints on almost every month of the year, starting with the AFL’s first ever Opening Round, where our giant inflatable Sherrin was set up on the shores of Sydney Harbour in the week leading up to the first games of the season.
In April, we had a brand new ball design for one of the biggest weekends on the AFL calendar, Gather Round. With the help of Port Adelaide legend Travis Boak, our mascots T.W. and Syd launched the new Gather Round ball design from atop the Adelaide Oval RoofClimb, kicking off a week of footy, festivities and fun in South Australia.
A couple of weeks later, we showcased the 2024 ANZAC Round footballs on 9News with the help of Vietnam veterans and Noble Park RSL committee members John Meehan and Ray McCarthy. In addition to the traditional Essendon vs Collingwood and Richmond vs Melbourne ANZAC Round game balls, this year also featured a ball for the GWS vs Brisbane game that was also held on ANZAC Day, marking the first time three specific balls have been produced for ANZAC Round.
The busy period kept rolling, with Sir Doug Nicholls Round commencing in May and running over Rounds 10-11. This year we had a new design for the SDNR game ball for the first time in two years, with former Adelaide player and proud Kusu man from the Torres Strait Islands, Ben Davis, coming on board to create the new design. Ben’s design also replaced the ‘Sherrin’ wordmark with ‘Koethuka Kakur’ which translates to the words for ‘ball’ in Kalaw Kawaw Ya dialect which is used in the top western Torres Strait Islands of Dauan, Sabai and Boigu. Additionally, Ben was given the opportunity to speak to the Gold Coast Suns players and staff in Darwin about the meaning of his ball design ahead of the first game of SDNR between the Suns and Geelong, while he also presented the game ball to the umpires at TIO Stadium before the first bounce. Ben’s design will be used again for SDNR in 2025.
Throughout June and July, in collaboration with the AFL we ran a “design your own Sherrin” competition as part of Kids Go Free month. The competition received over 1,100 entries and was narrowed down to two winners, whose designs were then created into 100 size 3 footballs for them and their school.
Once September rolled round, it was all systems go with our 2024 AFL Finals ball in use across the first three weeks of the finals, before Sydney and Brisbane etched their name onto our 2024 AFL Grand Final game ball. During Grand Final week, TW and Syd were out and about at the Grand Final Footy Festival, while our giant inflatable Sherrin was again on display beside the Yarra at Birrarung Marr. As the kings of the AFL jungle, the Lions were the team to feature on this year’s AFL Premiers ball, with the names of players and game details displayed on this collector’s edition item in Premiers gold print.
With the men’s season over, the focus was well and truly onto the AFLW season, which had started at the end of August. For the first time ever, the AFLW competition was using the brand new Sherrin smart balls – footballs that included a tracking microchip inside the bladder to assist with scoring decisions in real time. The Sherrin smart ball was a huge advancement in football technology and proved to be a great success across the entire AFLW season.
In week seven, the AFLW celebrated its fifth edition of Pride Round, with the Sherrin Pride Round ball being used in all games across the round. In weeks nine and ten, the AFLW celebrated Indigenous Round, with proud Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri and Nurrunga woman Gabriel Stengle once again having her design displayed on the game ball for the second year. Gabriel’s design features ‘Tidna Parntu’ replacing the ‘Sherrin’ wordmark, translating to ‘football’ in Kaurna language.
The 2024 AFLW season ended in a similar way to the 2023 season, with North Melbourne again playing Brisbane at Ikon Park in the Grand Final. This year the AFLW held the Grand Final at night for the first time, meaning a yellow Grand Final Sherrin was used for the first time since the 2021 men’s season. Despite the matchup being the same as 2023, this year it was the Kangaroos who walked away with their first ever AFLW premiership, and first flag as a club since 1999. Completing the first ever undefeated season in the AFLW, North Melbourne had their season cemented in gold on the 2024 AFLW Premiers ball.
Finally, with summer now in full swing, we’ve launched our latest Face Footys – Beachy and Crafty. The newest members of the Face Footys team, Beachy is designed to be kicked around at the beach and is made to be durable through the water and the sand, while Crafty is a footy that can be coloured in, kicked around, rinsed off, and then coloured in again. Suns stars Matt Rowell and Charlie Rowbottom helped us launch Beachy up on the Gold Coast, while North Melbourne’s Nick Larkey showed off his art skills for 9News with Crafty.
With the football season stretching from late February all the way through to November, 2024 was one of the biggest years in Sherrin history, and we can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store.