Australian Rules Football
The football used in Australian football is similar to a rugby ball but generally slightly smaller and more rounded at the ends, but more elongated in overall appearance, being longer by comparison with its width than a rugby ball. A regulation football is 720–730 millimetres (28–29 in) in circumference, and 545–555 mm (21.5–21.9 in) transverse circumference, and inflated to a pressure of 62–76 kPa (9.0–11.0 psi). In the AFL, the balls are red for day matches and yellow for night matches.
Australian football ball brands include Burley, Ross Faulkner, and Sherrin (the brand used mainly by the Australian Football League).
The Australian football ball was invented by T.W. Sherrin in 1880, after he was given a misshapen rugby ball to fix. Sherrin designed the ball with indented rather than pointy ends to give the ball a better bounce. Before this time,a round ball was used from the 1850s to 1870s and later rugby balls were used to play the game.
Read more about this topic: Football (ball)
Famous quotes containing the words australian, rules and/or football:
“The Australian mind, I can state with authority, is easily boggled.”
—Charles Osborne (b. 1927)
“The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)