Wellington Floorball Club participating in AFO 2010

A ten player strong team from the Wellington Floorball Club recently competed in the 2010 Australian Floorball Open in Wollongong, NSW.

The team was the first ever New Zealand team to compete in an overseas tournament and was the only non australian team at the tournament, adding a lot of international flavour to the event.

The tournament was held over four days, with the best teams from all over Australia competing for the Australian Floorball championship.

The Wellington Team was placed in a group with four other teams and started the tournament with a convincing win in the very first game, beating the team from Canberra 5:1.

The next two group games were against strong teams from Bondi Raptors and Glebe FC and ended with 6:2 and 11:1 losses.

The final group game was against the local team from Wollongong and was going to decide who was going to take third spot in this group.

Wollongong got off to a good start and managed to get 2:0 in front. The Wellington team got one goal back and was pushing for the equaliser for a very long time.

Still at 2:1, Wellington replaced the goalie with an additional field player for the last 35 seconds but unfortunately this didn't pay off and Wollongong scored another goal, securing the win.

Wellington finished the group stage in fourth place and this meant a quarter final game against the top placed team from the second group.

In a tough game Wellington was clearly beaten by the team from Story Bridge that eventually finished second overall, the final score was 13:0.

The final game was a placement game against Redbacks from Perth. The two teams were fairly even, but the Redbacks were able to convert their chances and play very effectively, winning the game 4:0 in the end. This meant that Wellington Storm finished 8th out of 11 teams, and everyone was very pleased with this achievement.

The men's final was played between Story Bridge and Glebe FC, with the later team winning the tight game by 4:2. Bondi Raptors took third spot, so Wellington played all the top team and definitely could gain a lot of experience.

There were also four women teams competing for the title and NSW Vipers won the final against Victoria Venom 4:0.

Hopefully by then there might even be a Wellington women's team taking part. View the full draw and results

Establishing Floorball New Zealand

The second Wellington Open Floorball Tournament was played on Sunday 11. October. The tournament brought together floorball players from Wellington and Auckland for the first time and the occasion was used to establish Floorball New Zealand as the National Organisation. With a name change and a new, full committee, Floorball New Zealand is now set-up to take the sport to the next level in New Zealand.

Next year, the main aims for Floorball New Zealand are to continue promoting floorball at senior and at school levels, as well as setting up a New Zealand National Men's team to compete in the APAC Tournament 2011.

The Wellington Floorball Club is currently the biggest club in New Zealand and an active part of Floorball New Zealand, having several club members who hold positions on the central board. Wellington Floorball Club is also striving to be one of the main sources for National players for the New Zealand team.

Second Wellington Open Floorball Tournament 2009

The second Wellington Open Floorball Tournament was played on Sunday 11. October, with teams from Wellington and Auckland competing for the Wellington Open Shield. Games started at 8:30am with each team playing in a round robin format. Wellington B succeeded in winning all their games and was the clear winner of the tournament. Wellington A and the Auckland Stars battled it out for second place with Wellington A successful in the end. It was the first time a Wellington team won the tournament, after Blenheim dominated the inaugural competition last year.

With both Wellington teams coming first and second, the club had a very successful tournament and all the hard training paid off. As this is the only floorball competition currently in New Zealand, the Wellington Floorball Club can legitimately claim to be New Zealand Floorball Champion 2009.

Next years tournament will be on Saturday and Sunday, 16th and 17th of October, so book that date in your calendar to join in and be part of a team.

Further images can be found under gallery.

A news item about the tournament and the forming of Floorball New Zealand has been published on the official IFF website: www.floorball.org

IFF Floorball Development Seminar in Wellington

IFF organised a Floorball Development Seminar in Wellington, New Zealand on the 11th to the 13th of September together with the local Wellington Floorball Club. The seminar brought together Floorball activists from both Wellington and Auckland, as well as some participants from Australia.

The main focus of the seminar was to train referees and coaches in two separate streams and all the participants could benefit from the vast experience that the international lecturers had. A total of eight people from the Wellington Club took part in the seminar, with four doing the refereeing and four doing the coaching part. The seminar also focused on how to build and organise clubs, recruit players and build school programs.

Another objective of the seminar was to help re-establish the New Zealand Floorball Federation, which has been inactive for a while.

For the further development of Floorball in New Zealand, IFF believes that the seminar will prove to have been very beneficial and IFF is looking forward to see a New Zealand national team participate in the APAC in the coming years.

An article about the seminar has been published on the official IFF website.

First Wellington Open Floorball Tournament - October 2008

On Saturday, 18th of October 2008 the very first Wellington Open Floorball Tournament took place at the Recreation Centre in Kilbirnie. Two teams from Wellington and one team from Blenheim competed for the Wellington Open Shield. Each team played each other team twice and Blenheim proved to have a very strong squad, winning all four games against the two Wellington teams and taking the trophy in its inaugural year. The two Wellington teams fought hard to battle for second place in their games.

Everyone had great fun and it is planned that this becomes a regular event in the New Zealand floorball calendar. The teams from Wellington could see on what level other teams play the sport and were encouraged to train hard to have another shot at the title next year.

Further images can be found under gallery.

Floorball introduction session at Wellington College

On Monday, 21st of September 2009 Filip Skorepa and Christian Bertschinger ran a floorball introduction session at Wellington College. Around 25 students turned up to have a go at playing floorball over lunch time. A few of the students have been coming to floorball trainings already, but for most of them it was a new sport.

It didn't take long for them to get the hang of it. Under the watchful eye of the two coaches, a competitive game was played at the end of the session and everyone got right into it. There was already great passing and shooting and the students clearly showed great potential to play this sport in a competitive format.

The upcoming secondary school tournament will create the first such opportunity in the Wellington Region.

Wellington Floorball Club to become the first incorporated club in New Zealand

Seventeen people got together on Wednesday, 1st of April 2009 (this was no joke) to formerly establish the Wellington Floorball Club as the first incorporated floorball club in New Zealand. The constitution was accepted by the members and the first officers were voted into their positions. After the incorporation papers were all signed, we opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion before having our normal Wednesday night floorball session.