Women's Under 19 World Championship

The Women’s Under 19 World Championships are currently taking place in Nitra, Slovakia. The tournament consists of an A-division and a B-division, with the winner of the A-division being crowned World Champion and the winner of the B-division being promoted to the A-division for the next World Championships.

The A-division has 8 teams divided into two pools, while the B-division has only 5 teams in a single pool. The top 4 countries of Sweden, Finland, Swizterland and Czech Republic are expected to maintain their dominance in the A-division, while fighting for the top three spots amongst themselves. Earlier today Switzerland beat Sweden 5-4 in the group stages which is quite an upset as Sweden were considered favourites to win the tournament. This sets the stage for the semifinals and finals to be very interesting. The battle for 5th place should also be interesting, with home team Slovakia pushing to bring home the 5th place. However, they will have to defeat either Norway or Poland to accomplish this task.

The B-division looks to be quite interesting too, mainly because of the strength of the team that Canada has fielded. Canada tied their first match with Latvia 4-4 and earlier today crushed Austria with a 13-0 scoreline. Even more impressive is that all their players appear to be home-grown and developed their skills without European experience. Their main opponent now will be Denmark, who they face on Friday.

Best of all the whole tournament is being streamed live on the internet by the International Floorball Federation.

The A-division livestream can be found here: www.youtube.com/iffchannel

And the B-division livestream can be found here: www.youtube.com/ifflive

Both the official tournament website and the IFF event page contain the schedule, results and statistics from every match.

The most intense matches will be the semifinals, the final, the 3rd and 5th place matches and Canada V Denmark in the B-division.

The times and dates (in Australian Eastern Standard Time) are as follows for the above matches.

Canada V Denmark - 4th May @ 22:45

Semifinal 1 - 5th May @ 01:00

Semifinal 2 - 5th May @ 04:00

5th place - 5th May @ 20:00

3rd place - 5th May @ 23:00

Final match - 6th May @ 02:00

I’m tipping Sweden to take out the gold medal, Switzerland silver and Finland  will defeat Czech Republic to take the bronze. I think that Slovakia will edge out Poland to take 5th place and Canada will defeat Denmark to win promotion to the A-division.

Wednesday night floorball starts again for 2012

Our Wednesday night floorball sessions have begun for 2012 after a holiday hiatus. All the details are the same as they were last year; Wednesday 6:30-7:30pm at the Sports Hub at the University of Wollongong. Your first time is free and it’s $8 every time after that. We can supply the equipment, all you need is to come along with clothes and shoes suitable to run around in. Hope to see you there!

Asics targeting floorball players

The sport brand Asics has recently become one of the principal sponsors of the IFF. Along with this they have created some new advertisements featuring Swedish national team player Magnus Svensson in an effort to increase their visibility in the floorball market. Check out them out.

Champions Cup on WebTV

The Champions Cup starts today in the Czech Republic with the first match between womens’ teams Djurgårdens IF from Sweden and Rubene from Latvia.

The Champions Cup is a new tournament that has only been started this year after a decision by the IFF. The tournament grew from previous years’ European Cup as a way to have a competitive tournament for both developed and developing floorball nations. The championship winning club teams from the developed floorball nations play for the title of the Champions Cup whilst championship winning teams from developing floorball nations play for the European Cup. The winner of this year’s European Cup will be promoted and be able to play in next year’s Champions Cup, whilst the last placed team from this year’s Champions Cup will be relegated to playing for the European Cup next year. In all there are 12 teams in the Champions Cup, six in the mens’ section and six in the womens’ section. You can follow the teams, schedules, standings and statistics at the tournament’s official website or at the IFF website.

All of the matches are broadcast live on the internet and can be watched here for free, the first match is already underway (7pm East Coast Time). One of the really good aspects of the recent tournaments organised in the Czech Republic is that not only are the matches broadcast live on the internet but they are also archived online so that they can be watched later. This is great for us who live in Australia or other timezones that are a long way from Europe, the heartland of floorball. All the archived matches can be watched at link above.

The final and semi-finals or both the mens’ and womens’ sections should be good matches but there should also be some good matches in the group stages. Some of the best matches should be Mlada-Boleslav (CZE) against Wiler-Ersigen (SUI), Storvreta (SWE) against Tatran Stresovice (CZE) and SC Classic (FIN) against Red Ants Rychenberg (SUI). Mlada-Boleslav will be interesting to watch as they are playing on home turf (the tournament is being held in the city of Mlada-Boleslav) and also because of their physical style of play, which can be seen in one of our previous posts.

Thrilling opening to the SSL

The first match of the highest mens’ league in Sweden was played on Tuesday between FC Helsingborg and Pixbo. Pixbo’s Peter Runnestig scored three airhook goals in the match, the last of which levelled the score and sent the match into overtime.  FC Helsingborg ended up winning the match in overtime, with the sudden death goal being scored by Linus Nordgren. Here are some highlights from the match.

Change to Wednesday night Floorball times.

Wednesday night Floorball will be changed from 2 hours to just 1 hour in length and will now start at 6.30pm instead of 6pm. These changes will be effective starting tonight. The location remains the same; URAC Sports Hub at the University of Wollongong.

Swedish Final went down to a shootout

The final of the SSL (Swedish Super League), which was played back in April between Storvreta and Warberg, went down to sudden death penalty shots after the score was even at the end of extra-time. It took sixteen penalty shots to settle it and the whole of Malmö Arena was on the edge of their seats as they watched. Here is what it looked like:

Gong Floorball player selected to play at APAC

Andrew Clay from Gong Floorball has been selected to play at the Asia Pacific Championships (APAC) as part of the Australian Mens Under 19s team. The championships are currently underway in Perth over the course of this weekend (28th - 30th of January) and Australia is fielding a youth team as part of its preparations for the Under 19’s World Championships that are to be held in Germany in May.

The women’s matches of the tournament are set to be interesting as they are the Asia-Pacific qualifying for the Women’s World Championships to be held in December in Switzerland. Australia qualified directly for these championships after winning the B-division at the previous World Championships which leaves Japan and Singapore to fight it out for the remaining qualifying spot over the course of the weekend.

We wish Andrew and the Under 19’s team the best of luck at APAC and hope the tournament runs smoothly for all involved. The schedule and results of the tournament can be found on the website of the International Floorball Federation.

World Championships begins today!! All matches live on the internet!!

The training camp for the Australian team concluded on Wednesday with the team heading back to Helsinki for the beginning of the World Championships after a week of good, solid training. While I still have more recounts and material from the training camp to post, I just thought I’d make a quick post to notify everyone that the tournament begins today.

Sixteen teams are vying for the title of World Champion and all matches will be streamed live on the internet. Take the link below to the main streaming page and from there you can choose what matches you want to watch The times given on the page at local Finnish time (GMT +2), so make sure you check your corresponding local time and tune in at the right time.

Live Streaming World Floorball Championships Matches

You can also follow the progress of the overall tournament at the official website of the tournament.

The most important matches, of course, are the matches that Australia plays in. Australia is playing three matches; the times and dates of which are given below. Both the local Finnish time and the time of the Australian east coast are given.

Australia V Germany (Result 3-12: Germany’s win)

Time in Finland: Saturday, 4th of December at 13.00

Time in Australia: Saturday, 4th of December at 22.00

Australia V Sweden (Result 1-39: Sweden’s win)

Time in Finland: Sunday, 5th of December at 19.00

Time in Australia: Monday, 6th of December at 04.00

Australia V Estonia

Time in Finland: Tuesday, 7th of December at 11.00

Time in Australia: Tuesday, 7th of December at 20.00

Finally, I’d just like to say that this is definitely the strongest mens team that I have seen Australia field and I wish the boys the best of luck in all their matches.

Bye for now,

Daniel

Daniel accompanies Australian Mens Team in Finland

I have been accompanying the Australian Mens Floorball Team in Finland while they prepare for the upcoming World Floorball Championships in Helsinki. While not being part of the team, I have joined them to provide support and to train with them to get in as much Floorball as I can while in this part of the world. I have made my first post about this experience on my blog and will be posting more soon.

Bye for now,

Daniel