The first IFF Central Board meeting of the year was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands 10th – 11th of March.

Croatia newest IFF member
The Croatian Floorball Federation was approved as the IFF Member Association number 68. Croatia are a provisional member.
The Croatian Floorball Federation has also informed the IFF that they are willing to start to organize IFF events already during the year 2018.

Member Applications

The IFF office has created a membership application form, which hopefully will make it easier and clearer for the candidate countries to understand what documents and actions are required in order to fulfil the membership criteria set by the IFF.

Ethics Commission
The IFF Ethics Commission (ETC) have during the beginning of the year in cooperation with the Office created a Complaint form, which is placed on the IFF web page, for anyone to make a complaint about suspected infringements related to anti-doping, match fixing, irregular betting, harassment or corruption etc. The form is created to serve as a funnel for data collection and making it easier to define which body is to deal with the matter.

The World Games 2021
IFF has handed in the application for inclusion in The World Games 2021 in Birmingham. In addition, the IFF has been asked to present a proposal for some inclusion of ParaFloorball to the event and the IFF has built a proposal for a six-team mini tournament for Special Olympics Floorball.

Rules- and Competition Committee
Rules- and Competition Committee (RACC) is proposing to continue the test of using the IFF YouTube livestream for reviewing goals in IFF Events, which was tested in the WFCQs in Korea and Slovakia. Based on the report made by the IFF Event manager Ms. Sarah Mitchell, the outcome was very positive and clearly indicates that this could be an effective way of reviewing the goals also in the future. The system shall continue to be tested at the following events during 2018: the U19 WFC 2018, the U19 WFC 2019 qualifications, the EuroFloorball Cup and the EuroFloorball Challenge. The plan is to have a regulation change proposal for the CB-meeting in December.

Referee Committee
The IFF Referee Playbook have now also been updated to the version number two. The IFF Playbook steering group made a lot of amendments to the Playbook and also created educational interpretation guidelines for the new Edition of the Rules of the game 2018. The objective with the Referee Playbook is to streamline and unify the rule interpretation and the way the referees referee on primary an international and secondary a national level. The IFF office will send the IFF Way of Refereeing Playbook to all IFF member associations in the near future.

The CB also appointed the following referees Mr. Darien Loh Wern Chun and Mr. Calvin Lim Wen Quan from Malaysia and Mr. Massada Dem Cabillas and Mr. Joshua Paul Manalili from Philippines to the AOFC Development Group based on the proposal by the IFF RC.

Development
The first development seminar of the year will take place in Ukraine in mid-May with participants from Ukraine and also from the surrounding countries. There will be both coaching and refereeing blocks. In June in Singapore in conjunction to the AOFC Cup the plan is to carry out a three days level 2 coaching seminar.
The plan to have the second Floorball development seminar in Africa has moved forwards and there is a great interest towards a seminar to be held in August/September in Cote D’Ivoire for six to seven West African nations. A more advanced seminar is also planned to be held in the end of September in India in the city of Noida near Delhi. The purpose is to have a group of selected coaches and referees educated in the seminar and that way also to ensure that India would start to participate to IFF events on regular bases, since the number of players is constantly increasing in India and Floorball is an official sport in their national school and university Championships.

Material operations
The IFF has continued to take actions and further sanctioned the Chinese brand Rockwind, due to a misleading marking of their IFF non-approved Floorball material and not following the given directions by the IFF in the first stage.

WFC 2017 Bratislava, Slovakia
A total of 45 games were in the end broadcasted for TV and all broadcasted on the IFF YouTube channel and the production company Arena TV channels. 12 countries and a total of 17 companies took the live signal in one form or the other. 12 companies produced a total number of 4,8 million spectators.
The WFC had visibility in additionally three countries and the IOC Olympic Channel, a total of 19 matches, all with English commentary.

The WFC 2017 received a bigger media exposure than for the WFC 2015. When counting the numbers from April to the end of December, WFC 2017 had over 9k social media hits and 2.4k media hits. During the same timeline, WFC 2015 had less than 7k social media hits and approximately 2k media hits.

FISU World University Championships 2018
The preparations for the FISU World University Championships 2018 in Lodz, Poland is progressing and there are at the time six women’s teams and seven men’s teams registered and few more are expected to register.

Upcoming IFF Events

U19 WFC 2018 St. Gallen, Switzerland
The internet-TV production has been secured with the IFF partner PolarHD and all matches are produced. The LOC is actively in contact with the IFF in a number of fields and the preparations are progressing very well.

Follow U19 WFC on Social Media:
Facebook: U19 World Floorball Championships
Twitter: U19WFC
Instagram: U19WFC

#U19WFC #GirlsOnFire #Floorball

WFC 2018 Prague, Czech Republic
All qualifications have been played at Toronto, Canada, Jeju Island, South Korea, Valmiera, Latvia, Tallinn, Estonia and two groups in Nitra, Slovakia, with a total of 33 teams. The following teams are qualified to the final round: Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Germany, Estonia, Slovakia, Canada, Australia, Poland, Japan, Singapore and Thailand.

The Ballot was held in Prague 1st of March and the creating of the match schedule is ongoing. The Ballot was very well and professionally organized, with participation of six team representatives and nine ambassadors from the participating countries and televised live on Czech TV.

The WFC 2018 LOC will start ticket sales on the 15th of March and IFF has in order to have a first version of the match schedule ready by this

Follow WFC on Social Media:
Facebook: World Floorball Championships
Twitter: IFFWFC
Instagram: IFFWFC

#WFCPrague #Floorball

U19 WFC 2019, Halifax, Canada
A total of 26 teams have registered, which is the same number as for the U19 WFC 2017. The IFF CB approved, based on the IFF Competition office proposal that Canada and USA, in addition to the regular top 9 teams, shall be direct qualified and that 3 teams shall qualify from the European qualifications and 2 teams from the AOFC qualification.

WFC 2019, Neuchatel, Switzerland
29 teams have at the moment registered for the Women´s WFC 2019. Thailand has shown interest to organise the AOFC qualification and the IFF is looking for organizers to the remaining qualification tournaments.