I've had 100's of footys groing up and one of them has stuck through me and hasn't poped or hasn't be ruined at all. The ball was so good I never wanted to kick it because I thought I would ruin it. I finally did about 3 years ago and I still have it now. This sherrin footy is the official football that the AFL uses and that tells me it's a genuine top of the line footy. My mates, my brothers and I always use this footy through sunny days too the cold and rainy days. The rainy days do make the ball wet but the leather the ball is made out of dries preety quick under the sun and that's a fantastic feature. The ball is quite expensive but deffenatly worth it. As I said before I've had many balls in my day and I would say the estimated expense on all those balls would be around $400 but if I only had the sherrin through all those transactions I would have been saving around $300.