What the hell is floorball?

Taken from lcart.eu

I can't tell you how many times I have asked myself this question. I have quite a few friends that play it and I know that it is one of Sweden's most popular sports but the point of the game and how it works always seems to evade me.

Until I played it myself!

Every Monday at 4 a group of us head to the local hall to play some floorball as part of a work health plan. Needless to say it isn't very popular amongst us nerds who bury our faces in books and arch our backs at computers. We usually have between four to seven people every week which is well below the desired amount but does mean that we are always really stiff on Tuesdays!

Floorball was created in Sweden in the 1970s and is very similar to hockey. In fact, other than the ball and the stick I am not entirely sure there are any big differences. I would hate for my novice observations to piss someone off so I decided to do a little more reading about what exactly floorball is.


Here is what I found:

• It is most popular in Scandinavian countries as well as Czech Republic, Estonia, and Latvia. However, it is staring to get attention in Australia, the U.S. and Japan.
• It is a year round sport
• It started as a school sport in Gothenburg, Sweden in the 1970s 
• Although floorball in English it is called innebandy in Swedish, salibandy in Danish, and unihockey in German
• In 2009, Sierra Leone became Africa's first floorball team
• It is not an Olympic sport, not yet at least but has qualified as a sport in the Special Olympics 2013 

OK, so the above is interesting right! But it still doesn't tell us what on Earth floorball is. I guess to understand the game you have to have an idea of what the rules of the game are:

• Team is made up of 5 players and 1 keeper
• They can change players at any point during play
• A game is played over three 20 minute periods
• Shoulder to shoulder contact is allowed but checking is not (probably the biggest difference to hockey)
• Cannot raise your stick above knee level

So, are you any closer to understanding what floorball is? No? OK, then the best thing to do would be to show you a video I guess

Still feel no closer to knowing what it is? Well if the videos didn't help you understand floorball they did show you that sweden has some pretty rad sports colours and that everyone seems to look good despite running around. How do they do it? I guess we will never know