What do you get when you cross out-door hockey with in-door ice hockey? You get a game of speed and heart-pumping adrenaline, Floorball. Played on cemented ground, the area is a big a two badminton courts put together. Being indoors, the sport can be played all year round.
Founded in September 21st, 1979, Sala FloorballClub was the first floorball club in Sweden and in the world. It wasn’t until the 90’s in which the sport made a breakthrough.
In Sweden there are now approximately about 1600 floorballclubs all over the country. About 90 000 Swedes plays floorball and 27 000 of them are youths under the age of 16.
It was Carl-Åke Ahlqvist from Gothenburg who brought some plastic sticks with him when he returned home from a trip to Holland. He had bought them there in a toystore and he thought it would be fun to try playing with the sticks. He and other students in Gothenburg tried “floorball” and they really liked it. It was Carl-Åke who started to import the plasticsticks to Sweden.
After some years, he manage to locate a company where they made plastic sticks. Carl-Åke did not invent floorball, he developed the sport in his own backyard.
Christer Gustavsson who just had finished upper secondary school, had plans to start something for the youth who didn’t have anything to do. The schools of Sala there had been floorball equipment since 1976 so Christer and some friends began to play. The interest was there but the game didn’t develop.
Christer and his friends sat talking in his apartment and came up with the idea that floorball could be played on a larger court with big goals and a goalkeeper and eventually the idea became a success.
Sweden is one of the countries that established floorball. Sweden has over 65% of all floorball players in the world. Sweden with Switzerland and Finland founded the IFF, International Floorball Federation 1985. Nowadays there are 19 members totally about 140 000 floorball players in 3300 clubs. Floorball is a very popular sport in Scandinavia but now also in the rest of Europe.
Floorball is played with five players, one goalkeeper on each team. The team can only have 11 replaces during the game which is played during 20 min of 3 sets. Every player has a plastic stick who is about 1m tall. The ball is 7.2cm in diameter, white and made of plastic. To make the ball light there are 26 little holes on the sides.
The court looks like an icehockey court but it’s smaller. It is 40m long and 20m wide with a 50cm sideboard around. There is a goal on each sides which is guarded by a goalkeeper without a stick. The goalkeeper sits on his knees and has a mask over his face. He can touch the ball all over the court but only if he has a part of his body in the goalarea. The aim with the game is to shoot the ball into the other teams goal but you can’t touch the ball with your head,hand or with your arm. But you can kick the ball infront of you to your own stick. You can’t hit the ball with the stick above your knees.
All this is punished by a free hit for the other team. If you kick, throw your stick or make the against player fall you can get penalty and a free hit for the other team. If a player tries to stop an obviously goal situation he’ll be punished with a penalty shot against his team.
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