Singapore, Japan and Korea were all strong winners in the WFC qualifications opening day in Jeju Island, South Korea. As well as the Floorball, the opening ceremony provided a mix of entertainment – traditional dancers and K-pop.

Singapore was the first team to get the points, with a 10-2 win over New Zealand. Singapore have a well-developed league system and Floorball is played throughout the country in the majority of schools. They have a team mixed with experience and improving junior players and showed good overall game play in their win. While New Zealand also has included several of their U19 players to the adult team and the popularity of Floorball is growing with juniors, their limited experience showed against Singapore.

Japan versus Malaysia was another game of a very experienced country against one that has been working to get back into international Floorball. In the last couple of years, Floorball has made a resurgence in Malaysia becoming much better organised and recognised, but international matches are still limited, and against Japan which has been one of the top Floorball countries in Asia for many, many years they found it difficult. Japan scored a convincing 12-3 win.

Korea have been close to qualifying for the WFC final round in the last two events and now as hosts of this event are hoping that their luck will turn. A ticket to Prague is no doubt their aim for this tournament. Playing against China, who are making their WFCQ debut, they had a fairly easy start to the event winning 14-0. They will face a much greater challenge in their next opponent, Australia.

Match replays are available on IFF YouTube Channel 1 and photos on Flickr.

For all results and statistics visit the WFCQ 2018 AOFC Event page.