The fourth IFF Central Board (CB) meeting of the year was held in Riga, Latvia 5th-6th of November. There were discussions about the upcoming General Assembly, referee nominations, upcoming IFF Events and two new member associations.
The IFF CB worked on Saturday with the annual report 2015-2016 and the plan of action for 2017-2018, which will be taken to the IFF GA for approval.
Somalia and Hong Kong new IFF Members
Two new members were welcomed to the IFF family: The Somalia Floorball Federation (SFF) and The Hong Kong Floorball Federation (HKGFF). The SFF is at the moment operating out of Sweden, but is also cooperating with the Somali NOC in Mogadishu. The HKGFF is at the moment mainly focusing on youth and school floorball, but is eagerly looking to enter the International competition activity. The SFF is IFF member number 63 and HKGFF number 64.
IFF General Assembly 2016
The 14th IFF the General Assembly will be held during the WFC2016 in Riga, Latvia on the 10th of December at the IFF Official Hotel Radisson Blue Latvia, starting at 08:30 and expected to end until 13:00.
So far a total of 16 countries have informed that they will participate in the IFF General Assembly, but the dead-line for registration is on the 11th of November. Out of the participating 16 teams only 7 have registered. Only one has so far informed that they are not participating at all.
Referee Committee
The IFF Referee Committee (RC) nominated 126 international referees (24 countries) and 25 international observers (10 countries) for the upcoming nomination period 2017-2018. The number of referees is bigger than ever before. Out of the 126 referees 30 were nominated to the development group. The IFF referee development group has turned out to be worthwhile and during the last four years the RC has been able to promote more than 30 referees from the development group to the ordinary group.
The RC also launched a new referee group, which is called the “educator group”. The group consists of very experienced international referees and they will in the future mainly referee in the international weekends’ tournament and IFF qualifications in order to support and educate the less experienced referees especially those, who don’t have referee observers in their own member associations.
The RC also discussed about the upcoming IFF way of Refereeing seminar and about the Referee Play Book, which will be introduced to all participants in the seminar during the WFC 2016 in Latvia. The purpose of the Play Book is to unify the procedures of the referees in IFF events and later on the book will also include mutual interpretations of the rules of the game.
Athletes Committee
The nomination for IFF Athletes Committee elections has now ended and we have a total of eight Women and eight Men candidates. The election will be organised for the male representatives in Riga during the WFC 2016 and the Women representatives will be elected during the WFC 2017 qualifications.
Development operations
The IFF organised Floorball Development Seminars in Gwalior in India from the 9th to 11th of September 2016 and in Douala in Cameroon from the 23rd to 25th of September 2016. Both seminars were well organized and in India, there were around 70 participants from different parts of India. Almost all the regions in India were represented. Both coaching and refereeing blocks were educated in the seminar. There were also discussions with the Indian Floorball Federation that they should start to participate to the IFF events in the near future. The Indian Federation is also planning an EOTO related co-operation with the Singaporean Association regarding coaching and refereeing by the end of the year 2016
The Floorball Development Seminar in Douala in Cameron was the first ever Floorball Development Seminar organized in Africa. The Cameroon Floorball Association did a good job with the seminar and there were approximately 50 participants from eight different African countries, mainly from the Western parts of Africa. The participants came from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, Republic of Central Africa, Rwanda and Togo. Out of the eight participating nations two are IFF members for the time being. The African nations have also launched a project called “Floorball for Africa”, which is an EOTO related project, where the existing IFF member associations are helping the none members to be able to apply for the membership in the IFF.
The planned Floorball Development Seminar in Turkey in the beginning of October was cancelled and is at the time planned to take place in spring 2017. Plans for a seminar in Australia and other ones in Africa also exists for the year 2017.
The World Games 2017
The preparations towards the Wroclaw World Games are continuing and the IFF Office has made and sent out a shorter member association’s guide to promoting the World Games to the countries participating in the WFC 2016. At the present most activities is towards promotion of the Event in the Floorball Media.
The World Games webpage: http://theworldgames2017.com/
#TWG2017 #RoadToWroclaw
Upcoming IFF Events
Men’s World Floorball Championships 2016
The TV production is set for a total of 29 matches in the Arena Riga, to 11 different broadcasters plus the World Games channel. Discussions are still going on with Singapore, Thailand and Russia. Discussions are also ongoing with SUHV to see what can be done in Switzerland.
The 11th Men’s WFC is played in Riga, Latvia, December 3rd – 11th 2016.
Official WFC social media accounts:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/worldfloorballchampionships
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iffwfc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iffwfc
#WFCRiga #floorball.
Men´s U19 World Floorball Championships 2017
The U19 WFC 2017 Final Round is made of 8 teams in A-division & 8 teams in B-division. All A-division teams, as well as two B-division teams directly qualified, based on results from the Men´s U19 WFC 2015. The remaining 6 spots in B-division were decided via regional quota systems and qualification events. The match schedule has been released and can be found on the IFF Webpage.
Visit the official website: wfc2017.se
Official U19 WFC in social media accounts:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/U19WFC
Twitter: www.twitter.com/U19WFC
Instagram: www.instagram.com/u19wfc
#u19wfc #floorball
Women’s World Floorball Championships 2017
Malaysia applied to register late which give a total of 32 registered teams and that the playing mode for the AOFC qualification has been changed accordingly. The organiser of the WFCQ in New Zealand has agreed to have nine teams in the tournament. The schedules for the AOFC and European qualifications have been published already.
The Americas qualification will be played 03-04.02.2017 in Markham (ON), Canada. Exact schedule is still to be informed.
The WFC 2017 will be played in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Upcoming organisers
The bidding for the U19 WFC 2019 is ongoing with Canada and Slovakia in the IFF Event Management Tool. The bidding closes 23rd of November and the evaluation will be made before the IFF CB in December. Regarding the U19 WFC 2020 China has shown interest to organize the Event.
China has sent a letter of interest to organize WFC 2021 and China, Slovakia and Switzerland have sent letters of interest to organize WFC 2022.
