AFL approves Airtec's Ball Inflator

Digital Inflator

Sherrin, the official match football manufacture for the AFL, has approved the use of Airtec’s MXC2 Digital Sports Ball Inflator and expresses the importance of correct ball pressures:

“Over-pressurizing will stretch the leather and stitches of a ball, diminishing its performance and life span. We highly recommend the use of the MXC2 Digital Inflator for consistency and accuracy”.

Giuseppe Mamone, Richmond Football Club Property and Facility Manager, has recently invested in Airtec’s new digital ball inflators for the Tigers. His main goal is to reduce the pressure variation in balls and increase performance in each game by complying with a unified and standard ball pressure.

The Football Federation of Australia “highly recommends” the use of Airtec’s Digital Sports BAll Inflator in order to get an accurate standard pressure in balls used for competitions and practice games.

Previous Situation

Manual Inflator

Until now, schools, community centres, sports clubs and professional sports business, have been using inconsistent alternatives for ball inflation. The most common method: manually inflating balls using a manual pump or small portable compressors together with a pressure gauge. As a consequence:

Over-inflated balls: high risk of bursting; low ball life span.

Under-inflated balls: loss in performance, incorrect execution of the sport.

Inconsistency in pressures: different opinions from umpires on the correct ball pressure, which brings possible conflicts between sport clubs and sports competitions.

Inaccuracy: High percentage of human error when manually inflating. It is a common practice to inflate a ball by calculating the number of pumps done with the manual inflator. The number of pumps would vary depending on the size of the ball and the size of the pump. In addition, the pumping needs to be done the same way every time making sure the pump handle is extended to the maximum and be fully pressed.

Time consuming: As a general rule the home club should have around 36 balls for outdoor games ready for pressure testing 2 hours before the start of a game. With manual inflation, this tasks is tedious and unproductive.

Unsafe: High probability of ball-bursting if over-inflated with a regular compressor.