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.

Floorball will return back to normal, Wednesday nights 6:30-7:30, once the exam period is over and we hope to see you all then.

Concerning Daniels knee injury

The injury Daniel sustained during the game was much more serious then previously thought. Daniel has  damaged his ACL ligament in his knee. This is one of the worse ligaments to damage and his injury may have to result in surgery. It is likely that Daniel will be unable to play for the remainder of this season. We wish Daniel all the best and a speedy recovery.

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.

The newest latest addition to the series can be found at the Oxdog YouTube channel and their website can be found here

“We have been asked by the North American International Hockey Federation to train men and women for the first U.S. Olympic team in this sport,” he said. “Speaking on behalf of Floorball Florida, USA Floorball and the International Floorball Federation we would like to engage in an ongoing development partnership. We see the potential of Freedom Harbor being a leading host facility for floorball events in North America. Globally, floorball is the fastest growing team sport and we are seeing a very encouraging trend to hosting large scale open championships that bring in players, coaches, volunteers and spectators.”

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This article was brought to my attention from the guys at Floorball Central who are doing a great job in posting a variety of floorball related news, check them out.

Now you know better