Floorballers pick up pace
New Zealand is on the brink of being represented on the world stage in a sport few have ever heard of.
It is estimated just 1000 New Zealanders – or one in every 4693 of us – play floorball but roughly half of them come from Wellington.
So it seems appropriate that as the New Zealand floorball team competes to send a team to the under-19 Men’s World Cup in Canada, the qualifiers will be in Wellington.
In fact, of the New Zealand team, 16 of the players are from Wellington, three are from Hutt Valley and the remaining one is from a big city north of the Bombay Hills.
Floorball – also called unihoc or unihockey – is described as a fast growing type of hockey.
It is played indoors with fibreglass sticks and a lightweight plastic ball with holes in it.
It was invented in the 1970s and first appeared in Scandinavia and central Europe but has since gone global.
Around the world there are something like 300,000 licensed players and 2 million recreational players and moves are afoot to get it into future Olympic Games.
This week – September 27 to 29 – the ASB sports centre in Kilbirnie is hosting the under-19 men’s world cup qualifying tournament for the Asia-oceania region.
Three teams – from Japan, Australia and New Zealand – will be competing to win two spots to the World Cup in Halifax, Canada, in May 2019.
Under-19 men’s coach Christian Bertshinger said the sport had many drawcards.
It was easily picked up and ‘‘when you are on the court you are always involved’’.
‘‘Everyone is always part of the action,’’ he said.
‘‘It is very fast.’’ Wellington’s dominance in the sport was in part due to many schools picking it.
A win against either Japan or Australia would be a first for the under-19 men but one that he reckoned they had a good chance of achieving. ‘‘I think we certainly have closed the gap,’’ he said.