International Floorball Federation Press release
Vantaa, Finland, January 12th 2008
Topics:
IFF Athletes Commission
Future of the U19 WFC´s
New Member Association
IFF established an Athletes Commission
The IFF CB decided on its meeting in November to form the first ever IFF Athletes Commission (ASC) consisting of 4 female and 4 male athlete representatives. The following athletes were appointed to the IFF Athlete commission, based on the nominations sent in by the Member Associations:
Ms. Paula Jouhten (Finland)
Ms. Linda B. Andersen (Norway)
Ms. Widyawillis Bte Selamat (Singapore)
Ms. Melanie Cathie (Australia)
Mr. Niklas Jihde (Sweden)
Mr. Matthias Hofbauer (Switzerland)
Mr. Michael Schachner (Austria)
Mr. David Brown (USA)
The objective of the Athletes Commission is to utilize the Floorball players experience and knowledge when developing the game of Floorball and the IFF Regulations. The IFF Athletes Commission will participate in the preparation of the Game Rule changes, looking over the Competition Regulations and participate in the development of IFF Competitions. In the future the election of the Athletes will be conducted during the Adult’s World Floorball Championships, starting with the female members in the WFC in 2009.
The IFF CB appointed CB member Mr. Risto Kauppinen to lead the commission, who looks forward to leading the ASC within the IFF: “It is important that the opinions of the players will be taken more thoroughly into consideration when developing our rapidly growing sport in the future.”
Future of the U19 WFC´s
Changing the age of the oldest players and fixing the youngest age
Based on the change of the international calendar and moving U19 WFC from November to May the IFF CB decided based on the proposals from the Member Associations to change the age of the U19 players to be one calendar year older.
The IFF CB decided to change the U19 age group, so that the players are 6 months older. In connection with this the lower age (15 years) was discussed and the CB decided that the date for the lower age shall be a fixed date instead of a moving date (according to the start of each tournament) as is the case of today. The Under 19 age period shall cover 4 years. For the Men’s U19 WFC 2009 this means that players eligible to play in the tournament shall be born between 01.01.1990 and 31.12.1993. The changes shall be valid from the U19 WFC 2009.
The system of the U19 WFC competition
The CB decided according to the RACC proposal that the new system for adults must be evaluated before the U19 moves into the same system. Meanwhile the U19 should continue to be played with an A- and a B-division and qualifications to the B-division. The playing system shall for the time being stay as an A- and a B-division with 8 teams each and that qualifications shall be played to the B-division if there are more than 16 registered for the event.
New Member Association
The IFF accepted the Portuguese Floorball Federation´s Membership application and welcomed the Portuguese Floorball Federation as IFF member number 45.
