Floorball is a game played and encouraged by only a few people. People are in agreement that floorball is an excellent alternative to Floor Hockey. The big difference between the two is that the rules of floor ball do not allow any high sticking, stick contact or body contact, so the game tends to be less physical than floor Hockey and more skill oriented and fast paced.
History of Floorball Federation of India
The game of Floorball has come to India just a few years back and as a result, it has not got the chance of gaining popularity among the people till now. One of the great sports enthusiastic of India, Mr. Mohd Seraj Ansari has done a great job for bringing the sport to India, by registering the Floorball Federation of India (FFI) in 2001. Mr, Ansari registered FFI under the aegis of the International Floorball Federation-IFF. However, he faced a lot of obstacles at the beginning, as there were no equipments and no supporters. Mr. Ansari then met the famous Floorball enthusiast, Mr. Jarkko Harkonen of Finland in March 2003 and they together started working for promoting the sport in India. Mr. Harkonen helped FFI to import some equipments of Floorball to India and that helped the organisation a lot.
After receiving the equipments from the Finnish manufacturers, the FFI started preparation for organising a national championship and it organised the first ever National Floorball Championship (men & women) in Maharashtra. A large number of 200 enthusiastic players and officials took part in the first 5 days of the National Training Camp in India. The Girls & Boys Team from Manipur made the longest trip of 6 days in the championship. The Uttar Pradesh team won the National Championship in Men`s division and the Team of Delhi was the winner of National championship in Women`s division. The FFI organised the second National camp in Lucknow, in City Montessori School (CMS) and this time, a group of children joined the camp. The FFI became successful to convince the City Montessori School (CMS) of Lucknow to adapt the game to be one of the school sports. The first local league in India named the Avandh Floorball League was organised in August 2004. All the players were registered in FFI and they were also insured against floorball injuries.
Floorball Clubs in India
•Floorball Strikers
•Floorball Smashers
•Quick Silver FC
The Floorball Federation of India (FFI) has successfully completed seven years of its journey so far and it has done a significant job for spreading the game in some of the major cities of the country. Working under the affiliation of International Floorball Federation - IFF, the FFI has already been continuously organising national seminars, states seminars. The FFI has also participated in an International Seminar in Singapore and also in Asia Pacific Floorball Championship-2005, Singapore.
