The IFF Central Board has decided during its meeting that new formats of Floorball need to be tested before a possible implementation in 2022.
In 2017, when the IFF and the floorball community was participating in The World Games in Wroclaw, Poland, floorball was played and presented with a new version. This version was by many, considered as the most interesting and exciting floorball ever seen on the international level.
The new format with less players and the playing time of 3 x 15 minutes offered extremely fast games with the best players constantly on the field of play.
After this, the process of introducing a new playing format was started with the IFF Member Associations at the IFF Association Meeting in Bratislava in December 2017 and the IFF Central Board was given the task to prepare the new format. After months of preparation the IFF has then through the RACC Future of Floorball questionnaire, collected the input from its Member Associations.
The majority of the countries supported the idea to make changes, but also critical voices were raised and some additional proposals were made. During the last weeks, the IFF CB has received a lot of feedback from a number of players, coaches, member associations and media. The IFF CB therefore discussed the reaction from different stakeholders during its meeting in Prague and prepared the topic for the upcoming IFF General Assembly to be held December 8th in Prague.
– We understand that most of the member associations believe it is the right way for future floorball, but we are also of the opinion that the format needs to be very well tested before the final decision is taken. That is why we now propose to start only with a long testing period on different levels in cooperation with the member associations and after thorough evaluation the floorball family will then make a final decision in 2022 of which direction to move, IFF President, Mr. Tomas Eriksson, commented.
The CB decided to propose to the General Assembly to execute a set of initial tests of the new system during the seasons 2019 – 2020 and 2020 – 2021 in some of the IFF Events. In addition, other national and international events will be selected, in cooperation with the member associations as test events during the season 2019 and/or 2020 – 2021. After this, the floorball community can evaluate the overall effect of the changes on both a national and international level.
The test events shall be played with teams consisting of a maximum of 22 persons in the team delegation, including 17 players and 5 officials. The playing time is 3 x 15 minutes effective time, with 10 minutes intermissions. The IFF member associations are also free to apply to test other formats during this period.
– We also welcomed the offer from many countries, including the biggest countries that they are willing to start the tests during the upcoming seasons. We also want to thank the member associations for their support as many of them have been discussing the topic the whole year of 2018 and their ongoing feedback was really valuable, Mr. Tomas Eriksson added.
For more information, please contact:
John Liljelund, IFF Secretary General
Phone: +358 400529030
E-mail: liljelund(at)floorball.org
