Tomorrow, the Swannies will undertake ANZAC Boot Camps in both Vung Tau and Hanoi.
This week, Vietnam Swans’ National President, Phil Johns, travelled to the home of an Aussie Rules icon: Sherrin. Sherrin Footies!
The Sherrin factory is located in Melbourne’s outer east and it was there that Johns met with Sherrin’s Rod Lawson to talk Asian footy, especially the East Asian Australian Football League (EAAFL) and the ANZAC Friendship Match.
Rod was enthusiastic about the newly formed EAAFL and generously offered to support the member clubs with specially discounted Sherrin footies.
Sherrin can also organise for logos to be printed on the footies, for a very competitive price, provided there is a minimum order of 24 balls. While the minimum order will rule out a special commemorative ANZAC Friendship Match ball, it certainly makes balls with the EAAFL logo very possible if 20 clubs from around the Asia are purchasing them.
On the subject of the ANZAC Friendship Match, Rod said that Sherrin would like to offer its support by sponsoring two Kangaroo Brand footies! Absolutely fantastic news and further evidence of the growing prestige and status of the match (last month, the AFL’s International Development Manager, Tony Woods supplied one Kangaroo Brand ball for the match ensuring that the field umpire will always have a Kangaroo Brand ball readily available).
The Kangaroo Brand Sherrin is the most famous and, not surprisingly, is used by the AFL. Rod explained that the Kangaroo Brand uses leather taken from the cow’s stomach. It is a softer leather and is blemish free compared with the leather taken from the cow’s shoulder. “You don’t see many cows rubbing their stomachs on fence posts”, added Rod.
The leather from the shoulders is used to make Sherrin’s No. 2 footy, the Match ball.
Rod was also pleased to advise that just a month ago, Sherrin launched its new fluorescent range of footies that have glowing ink. These footies have been specially designed for clubs training in dimly lit conditions.
For some reason, “dimly lit conditions” resonated with the President of the Vietnam Swans who is too familiar with our finger-popping mid week training venues in Vietnam – or when we are finishing off twilight matches against the Royal Australian Navy! Immediately two of these new footies were ordered (see photo of new glow football below)! We very much look forward to evaluating the performance of these footies.
The Vietnam Swans would like to thank Rod Lawson, with Aydan Cameron and Naomi, for Sherrin’s very generous support of the EAAFL and the ANZAC Friendship Match.
Interesting trivia
Not surprisingly, Sherrin is featured in the book, Superbrands. Also, not surprisingly, the Sherrin article mentions that:
“At grass roots level, the Sherrin will be the first invited to the game and you can read about its performance in the local record while honking the car horn. “
Honk if you love the footy in Vietnam.
Honk! Honk!!
Sherrin’s website
To find out more about Sherrin, the choice of Legends, check out the Sherrin website. Made by hand. Loved by foot.