The Asia-Oceania Floorball Confederation (AOFC) General Assembly was held on Saturday 6th February 2016, in conjunction with the WFC Qualification event in Pattaya, Thailand. 12 of the 13 AOFC member countries attended the meeting, during which elections for 2016-18 were held.
Outgoing President, Mr Stephen King (AUS), opened the meeting and thanked Khun Chaiyapak, his team and the Thailand Hockey Association for their excellent work and hosting of the WFCQ and the General Assembly. He also welcomed IFF President Tomas Eriksson and Secretary General John Liljelund to the meeting.
Pictured Left-Right: Mr Stephen King, Mr Tomas Eriksson, Khun Chaiyapak, Mr John Liljelund
On behalf of the AOFC Central Board Mr King gave a report of the AOFC activities for 2014-15:
– The increase in the number of countries & teams participating in WFC & WFCQ events has been very encouraging
– Implementation of the new AOFC Referee and Observer Development program has been a great success with 4 pairs now being approved in conjunction with the WFCQ in Thailand
– Rapid growth of the player numbers in several countries shows how their hard work is paying off, with great examples in countries such as India, Korea and New Zealand
– Project Oceania has commenced with a successful visit to Fiji as the first action with the goal to expand to Samoa, Tonga and other Oceania countries
– Participation and organising multi sports games with the SEA Games and WUC in Singapore
– Continuing to hold IFF Development seminars and referee and coaching development
During the meeting, all positions on the AOFC Central Board were declared open and elections were held for 2016-18, with the results as follows:
President: Dato’Seri Chaiyapak Siriwat (THA) (new)
Senior Vice President: Stephen King (AUS)
Vice President: Atul Gupta (IND) (new)
Vice President: Tsutomu Watanabe (JPN) (new)
Secretary General: Christian Bertshcinger (NZL)
Treasurer: Gum Sung Kang (KOR)
West Asia Envoy: Ramezanali Davalo (IRA)
Members:
Jason Cowland (AUS) (new)
Harinder Kumar (IND) (new)
Raymond Nangoy (INS) (new)
Takanobu Yoshino (JPN)
Hwang Joo Kim (KOR)
Mohd Hafidz bin Zainalabidin (MAS) (new)
Sheikh Muhammad Junaid (PAK) (new)
Ralph Ramos (PHI) (new)
Kenneth Ho (SIN)
Khun Chaiyapak addressed the meeting and thanked them for their vote of confidence in him and he committed to work with the CB to develop floorball more in the region. He also stated he would work to get an office open in Thailand in the near future to support AOFC.
Other items that were discussed:
– It was agreed that an Asian Games project would be a focus for the CB to include in their plans and to work closely with theIFF. Further discussions were to be held at the CB meeting
– It was agreed to establish an AOFC Athletes Commission and to appoint the existing 2 IFF Athletes Commission members for the AOFC region to the AOFC Athletes Commission. They are Jill Roberts (AUS) and Junoh Lee (KOR). MrLiljelund informed the meeting that the Athletes Commission would mean that they were also ex-officio officers of AOFC
– Due to both political and process issues the organisers for a number of events are yet to be decided. The meeting agreed to allow the CB to continue discussions for the next month to try to come up with recommendations for organisers of the WFCQ 2017 Women, WFCQ 2017 U19 Men and WFCQ 2018 Men.
The new AOFC Central Board held their first meeting later in the day and discussed the points that had been raised during the General Assembly. Many new committees were decided and a report from this meeting will follow.
