The IFF held its fifth CB Meeting on Friday the 9th of December in Riga, Latvia. The next CB meeting, with the newly-elected members was held already on the 11th of December.
IFF General Assembly 2016
The 14th IFF General Assembly was held in Riga, Latvia on Saturday the 10th of December. Read the news about the General Assembly here.
IFF 30th Anniversary
On the same date, the Celebration of the IFF 30th Anniversary took place in the WFC Main Venue Riga Arena, between the two semi-finals in the VIP room. Silver & bronze service medals were awarded. Read the news about the IFF 30th Anniversary Celebration here.
CB Committee Nominations
A total of 20 IFF member countries have nominated persons for the IFF CB committees: Entourage Committee (ENC), Medical Committee (MC), Referee Committee (RC) and the Rules and Competition Committee (RACC). The committee persons will be finalised by the IFF CB in January 2017.
Development operations
After the Floorball Development Seminars in India and Africa in September 2016, there has not been any seminars held, apart from a two hour Good Governance seminar in connection to the Ukraine Floorball AGM in October. The plan is to have one seminar in Uganda in the beginning of March 2017 with participants mainly from the Eastern African nations. The seminars in Australia and Turkey are also under planning, but no details have been agreed so far.
There are several ongoing projects in the EOTO. In Europe for example there is a broad co-operation between Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Poland and Slovakia, and this has resulted in the creation of a new 6-nations tournament, which will be played for the first time in November 2017 with women´s teams. The tournament will also be an educational forum especially in the referee block.
In Africa related to EOTO it is expected to have some new member applications to be sent to the IFF during the first half of 2017. The existing IFF members in Africa are helping the new ones to apply and to collect the right documents and recognitions for the applying countries. The preparations for the African 3vs.3 will continue in the first half of 2017.
In Asia there are joint projects between India and Singapore, which will have a coaching and refereeing camp with two Indian teams playing in Singapore. There are also other projects planned between Malaysia and Singapore. The target in Asia is still to activate the members to start new projects, as well as to complete the existing projects. There are some challenges to make everyone understand the EOTO slogans: “Every Step Counts” and “Keep it Simple”.
Contacts to International Sports Organisations
The Indonesian Federation is in process to negotiate with the organiser of the Asian Games 2018 in Indonesia about the possibility to play some form of demo-tournament in connection to the Event. The IFF is supporting the initiative on the political level and looking for support for the initiative.
Rules and Competition Committee
In WFC 2016, there was the introduction of the testing of a video checking system by a jury member in the case of an unclear goal situation.
Referee Committee
The IFF Way of Refereeing seminar was carried out during the first weekend of the WFC 2016 in Riga, Latvia. There were 28 participants from 12 IFF member associations in the two days seminar. The IFF “Referee Playbook” was launched and educated to the participants and it was decided that the IFF referees will start to follow the Playbook from the Women’s 2017 WFC qualifications on.
The Playbook was also updated after group works during the seminar. The Playbook will be evaluated and updated annually by the group, which originally created the Playbook. The next step will also be to start the process to unify the rules interpretations globally. That work will be carried out in a close co-operation with the IFF RACC.
Medical committee
Ms. Anna Jacobson has prepared the proposal for IFF Doping Test Guidelines for 2017. The main changes are related to the Club teams responsibility to inform if schedule trainings are changed, so that there will not be missed tests due to these reasons. As the Clubs/National Associations are to pay for the missed tests and it leads to filing failures, it is important to have this under control.
Athletes Commission
The IFF Athletes Committee election for male athletes was conducted during the WFC 2016. The official result of the election will only be announced after the female athletes have voted during the WFCQ 2017 in the different qualification tournaments.
Floorball Fantasy
The IFF has started a test in connection to the WFC for a Floorball Fantasy Manager Game. The idea is to see how active the community is and then start a closer cooperation after the WFC.
IFF logo
The IFF logo and Corporate Identity in connection to the IFF Events was presented. The idea is to run with the present IFF logo until the U19 WFC 2017 in Växjö, Sweden, where the new logo and the new Corporate Identity will be launched. The idea is to try to talk with the Slovak WFC 2017 organiser, if they could incorporate the new IFF logo in their version of the WFC 2017 logo.
WFC 2015 Highlights Movie
The Women’s WFC2015 26 minute highlights program produced and marketed by BroadReach Media to maximise new broadcast partnerships has been well received by the takers, because it is easy to understand, fast-moving and the crowd is good in the spectators stands. Some of the broadcasters have repeated the episode up to 10 times. It has been broadcasted by FoxSport (Pan Europe), Setanta Sports (Ireland), Dubai Sports Channel (Pan Middle East), Fox Sports (Africa) and Eurosport Asia Pacific (Pan Asia). The program have been broadcasted in 134 countries, with a reach of close to 190 million households. A similar highlights video will be produced and distributed after WFC 2016.
Champions Cup
The proposal made by the Champions Cup steering group for the continuation of the Champions Cup after 2018 was presented. The proposal was based on the outcome of the CCSG meeting held in Borås 2016. In order to find a balance between the objectives and a financially viable solution, the appointed working group presented to play the Champions Cup as a final four tournament.
Men’s World Foorball Championships 2016 Riga, Latvia
The WFC was broadcast into 11 different markets plus some extras included on an ad hoc basis during the event. In addition to that 13 matches were broadcast on the Olympic Channel, with English commentary and all matches were streamed on the IFF YouTube channels and the World Games channel.
Special Olympics
The Special Olympics had a seminar during the final weekend of Men’s World Floorball Championships in Riga, Latvia for the Special Olympics teams that are taking part in the SO Winter World Games in Austria. The Special Olympics demo match was played during the same weekend at Arena Riga.
Upcoming organisers – U19 WFC 2019 & 2020 and WFC 2021 & 2022 organisers
The IFF CB decided to grant the Men´s U19 WFC 2019 to Canada and the city is Halifax.
The bidding process for the U19 WFC 2020 is going on and the bidding will close on the 31st of December 2016.
