About floorball
Floorball, a type of floor hockey, is an indoor team sport which was developed in the 1970s. Floorball is most popular in areas where the sport has developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. The game is played indoors on a gym floor, making it a year-round sport at the amateur and professional levels. There are professional leagues, such as
Finland’s Salibandyliiga and Sweden’s Svenska Superligan.
While there are 49 members of the International Floorball Federation (IFF), the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland have finished in most of the coveted 1st, 2nd and 3rd places at the Floorball World Championships. In addition to those four countries, floorball is gaining popularity in countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the United States
The game is believed to have originated in Gothenburg, Sweden. The sport began as something that was played for fun as a pastime at schools, and pre-season training for bandy clubs. After a decade or so, floorball began showing up in Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden, where the once school pastime was becoming a developed sport. Formal rules soon were developed, and
clubs began to form. After some time, several countries developed national associations, and the IFF was founded in 1986.
The game of floorball is also known by many other names, such as salibandy (in Finland), innebandy (in Sweden and Norway), and unihockey (in Switzerland and Germany). The names ‘salibandy’ and ‘innebandy’ are derived from bandy. Both of those names literally translate to ‘indoor bandy’. Unihockey is derived from ‘universal hockey’ since it is meant to be a special and simplified hockey form.