Most British people have never heard about the game of floorball, and many don’t know that three of the sport’s best teams are located in London. One of them is the London Crusaders, which is based in Tottenham.
The club was founded in South London by Chris Owen, who had seen the game when working in Bruxelles. Owen hardly knew the rules, but managed to gather some friends, and suddenly the team Southern Vikings were formed. However, many of the players came from North London, and the club eventually changed location and their name to the London Crusaders.
Today, Chris Owens is no longer a part of the club; instead the Czech Jarek Machota is in charge. He said: “Floorball in the UK is mainly played by expats who come to the UK and want to continue playing. But they started playing somewhere else. Mostly in Scandinavia, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Latvia.”
Despite being a rather unknown sport in the UK, floorball has two associations: Great Britain Floorball & Unihockey Association (GBFUA) and the breakaway group the UK Floorball Federation (UKFF). Beverley Needham, Chairperson in the GBFUA said about her association and the UKFF:
“Floorball in Great Britain is handled by GBFUA which is the governing body, and we do a tremendous amount of development in youth and senior league.”
And continued: “Unfortunately we have a small breakaway group that seems to cause a lot of destruction within the development of floorball in Great Britain. They set up their own group claiming to be the governing body which they are not, and this is confusing.”
London Crusaders was one of the teams joining the breakaway group. The UKFF was formed by a group of teams sharing the view that the GBFUA were only taking care of floorball for children, while the senior league was suffering. However, the Crusaders are no longer part of the UKFF, or any other organisation.
Mr Machota said: “There was an incident in the last national’s game; we got to the finale and we kind of didn’t like the way the referee refereed the match. Basically, we walked away because it happened to us in this league.”
He went on to say: “When we walked off the finals we decided that we didn’t want to associate [our team] with the new league.
Today, the Crusaders create friendly tournaments and don’t find a need to be in a league.
According to Beverley Needham, floorball in the UK is left behind other European countries, simply because it is a relatively new sport in Britain. However, she sees a development in the future: “We do a tremendous amount of development in youth and senior leagues. We basically have qualified coaches that travel throughout Great Britain, developing the sport. We are actively developing on a basic level to the international level so we can cover the whole range.
However, Jarek Machota has another view. He says: “To be honest, I can’t see floorball to be a big sport in the UK. I’ve been here since 1999, and I have been playing here since 2000 so I have seen the development and to be honest, it is not good.”
One of the problems could be the vast amount of international players in the leagues. Mrs Needham acknowledges that the standard between international and British players is huge, but also believes that the national players can benefit from the foreign ones.
However, most of the senior players in the UK are studying at universities: “Many of them are here for what? 3-4 years and then they go back… sometimes we can keep them and sometimes we cannot,” Needham said.
The Crusaders is a team of mainly international players, and despite not playing in any league, Machota considers his team as the best of the three London teams; Crusaders, Sharks and the Vikings.
“Quality wise, I think we are still the best in London. Viking are also quite good, and used to be best, but lots of their Scandinavians are leaving,” he said.
London Crusaders is training at the Haringey 6th Form Centre, White Hart Lane in Tottenham and is welcoming new players to come and join them every Thursday at 8 PM.
Excellent work, a couple of truly great points! I truly appreciate you writing this posting and the remainder of your site is great!
Member Association News
Just to update the situation; at the last IFF meeting they decided to give the UKFF the national governing body status and remove it from the GBFUA.
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The IFF CB has unanimously decided to approve the United Kingdom Floorball Federation (UKFF) membership application as the new provisional member representing the United Kingdom in the IFF, replacing the Great Britain Floorball and Unihockey Association (GBFUA). This decision takes effect immediately.
http://www.floorball.org/news.asp?id_tiedote=3240
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Hopefully now floorball in the UK can move forwards without all the political issues that have existed over the last few years
According to my calculations the GBFUA still currently includes the vast majority of clubs in the UK (we have 5, there are only 6 teams that we recognise, the other being the London Crusaders). The GBFUA have also set up and run a British Universities Floorball League. We originally came up with this idea many years before a new organisation, posing as ‘BUFL’, came along and claimed to be the Universities league; this is confusing.
We have performed well internationally, having represented Great Britain in 2012 with some great results:
Hungary M – Great Britain M 27 – 1 (we scored!)
Great Britain M – Austria M 0 – 10
Russia M – Great Britain M 25 – 0 (they cheated)
Great Britain M – Poland M 0 – 27 (they cheated too)
We are striving to bring our representation of clubs back up to 100% and are engaging in talks with London Crusaders to see if they will join the GBFUA (this shouldn’t be too difficult considering they hate the UKFF … yet they still haven’t joined us)
I would lastly like to point out that I do not understand what the word nepotism means, but I can assure you, whatever it means, it is not true when it comes to the GBFUA national team.
Kindest Regards,
B. Needham
Hi there belbo – just seen your post. I think it’s a worthy cause and I’d love to invest some of my hard earned earnings in a tax free offshore account. Call me let’s talk – I can get you a cheap transfer for the nice looking boy with long hair
I’m happy to offer my financial advice as well, my extended family has a long history of ‘clean’ book-keeping.
Why should I invest £100,000 of my hard-earned money, my children’s inheritance, instead of treating Mrs P to something special? Do you have some kind of patent on UK floorball? What’s to stop me creating my own breakaway league? Lets call it the Theoball league. And I can invite all my friends – Peter, Deborah, that one that looks like a dragon and that other boring guy that strokes his beard and refuses to invest in anything – to all come along and play too. Who knows, we might even be better than team GB. And if not, we’ll just buy our own country and make our own National League. Is Norfolk a country?
I would like to formally invite anyone that has ever read a Deliah Smith recipe book or watched an episode of Alan Partridge to apply to join the Norfolk Inway Floorball Unorganisation. Trials to be held at Linton Travelodge. Bring you own sticks. And balls. And goals if you don’t like referee’s decisions – then you can play your own game and everyone can be a winner.
For those reasons, I’m out (of touch with reality).
Just quick comment – we have players from other countries in our training sessions – Slovakia, Scandinavian players, Latvian, UK, France, Germany – we are open to other nations as well 🙂
Anyone who would like to try – check information
We play every Thursday at Harringey Centre close to White Hart Lane from 20:15 till 22:00, price £6, for more details please see http://www.londoncrusaders.co.uk
Come and have fune on good size pitch, fully boarded with proper mantinels (boards)
Slavo
Dear Mr Mousten,
I would just like to aid you in your quest for journalistic excellence by providing you with some corrections:
1. The UKFF has never claimed to be the governing body for Floorball in the UK.
2. The ‘Small breakaway organisation’ hosts the vast majority of senior teams in the UK (it is around 85% as stated above).
Also there are some systematic errors within your article. You have discussed the topic of Floorball in the UK but have failed to seek an opinion from anyone other than a representative from the GBFUA and one UK based club that has no British citizens playing for it.
Next time it might be worth you doing some research where you will learn that there are a number of reasons why two governing bodies now exist where only one did before:
1. The UK national team (under the GBFUA) has suffered from a severe amount of nepotism as well as closed, or non-existent, trials that have reached few of the British floorball players.
2. The GBFUA has made a number of claims that are wholly untrue and frankly, laughable. (Until recently, their website: http://www.gbfua.org.uk, suggested that the organisation was working hard with Universities to develop a Universities league. As the organisation is well aware, a Universities league already exists [British Universities Floorball League] and has been made in association with the UKFF)
However, Beverley Needham has provided me with a perfect description of this article: it has ’caused a lot of destruction within the development of Floorball in Great Britain’.
Please refrain from publishing anything further on this topic.
Not the best journalism unfortunately…..there doesn’t seem to have been any fact checking whatsoever
Around 85% of all UK adult teams in the UK joined the ‘small break away’ UKFF having decided the GBFUA were not acting the sports best interests.
90% of Crusaders are Czech nationals and players who aren’t already of a high standard (having played for many years aboard) have been turned away in the past. This guarantees the interviewees experience of the sport only being played by expats and not expanding in the UK.
In contrast London Sharks have league players from at least 13 different countries including 9 that are are British as well as more than a 100 non members on our mailing list that train with us occasionally. With a club that is constantly growing, two league teams and more members and training sessions than any other club in London the sport isn’t as limited as the article suggests. Our biggest challenge (and perhaps the sports) is finding suitable venues!
Crusaders walked out of the national finals because a goal was disallowed, whether the referees decision was right or wrong their behaviour displayed extremely poor sportsmanship that wouldn’t be tolerated in any other sport. The same threat of walking out of a tournament was used at a friendly match in France a few months later. The common theme is the team involved and not the UK league.
London Sharks train near Royal Oak on Mondays and Clapham Junction on Saturday’s. Players of all abilities are welcome. Find us on Google!
Graham Kendall
Chairman
London Sharks Floorball Club
Dear Graham,
Firstly, i would really appreciate if you show a bit of respect to the writer and to London Crusaders FbC.
Secondly, and read this very carefully please – we have NEVER EVER turned anybody away. this is a filthy lie and i can only guess what made you write it here and be so deceitful! In fact, the writer himself can probably tell what levels and standard of players we have in our club. So please stop spreading slenders like that.
Thirdly, you talking about checking the facts but it seems like you haven’t done your homework either. We have not walked out of that match because the goal was disallowed but because of consistent one-sided refereeing from the referees. I even had couple of people coming to me after that unfortunate event and shaking my hand and agreeing with our decision to walk out. that is a FACT! On the other side i had some other people coming to me and disagreeing with it for the sake of the floorball as a sport. we made the decision at the time and i still think it was the right one in that situation.
Lastly, i do agree with you that GBFUA wasn’t acting to the UK floorball’s best interest but the same can be said about UKFF!..and again that’s not only my opinion but also opinion of other people from other UK clubs.
/Jarek
Dear Mr. Harbo Mousten.
I was notified about your article and was surprised to find out that you clearly had not done your homework very well. It is not clear why you have not contacted the UKFF at all to explore the facts from their end making sure that what you publish is accurate. I thought that is all part of the good journalism to know all ankles of the story before publishing… well I am not a pro in publishing so please do educate me.
Anyway, I understand if you take GBFUA / Crusader’s side but I would advise you to discuss with someone from the UKFF as well, for example myself, to gain the full content of the real story behind the development of UK floorball and situation it is currently. That may actually open your eyes and give a bit more trust that there is a future for this sport in UK if we all work together towards the same goals, openly and transparently.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kindest regards,
Ville Manner
President
UKFF
Ville,
just to clarify – we as a club have no association with GBFUA either as your post may suggest – i quote “Anyway, I understand if you take GBFUA / Crusader’s side…”
There is NO joint side…