The IFF Central Board (CB) decided in December 2019 in its meeting in Neuchatel to give a task to the IFF Rules and Competition Committee (RACC) and IFF Referee Committee (RC) to prepare and update interpretations of the level of  physical game. The tendency has been that the game has become physically tougher and the CB was of the opinion that the interpretations need to be stricter in order to avoid unnecessary injuries.

The IFF RC created a working group with representatives from Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. The chair of the group is the IFF RC member Mr. Mika Saastamoinen from Finland. The work was planned to start in spring 2020, but due to Covid-19 the start of the project was delayed, and the group started to collect the material in the late summer 2020 and the first meeting took place in November 2020.

The planned schedule is that the first outcome from the group’s work would be presented to the IFF RC in March 2021 and the RC would then in co-operation with the IFF RACC continue the process so that it could eventually be presented to the IFF CB in early autumn and then be presented to the IFF Member Associations at the Associations’ Meeting in December 2021 and take into use along the new edition of the rules of the game in the beginning of July 2022.

–  The challenge of course is to find the mutual understanding of the rules and the interpretations. Most of the IFF members have interpreted the rules their own way and the way of playing is naturally based on that in different countries, says Mr. Mika Saastamoinen, the leader of the group.

– A project like this takes time, but the aim is that the new updated interpretations could be taken into use along with new rules of the game. There is no sense to do the work twice, first for the ongoing season and then again for the new rules 2022. After three meetings it looks that we are getting forward quite well and we are finding the consensus to different interpretations, he concludes.

More information from the IFF office from Mr. Veli Halonen: halonen(at)floorball.sport