SINGAPORE - Despite not knowing whether the Dec 4-12 men's World Floorball Championship (WFC) would take place, national floorballer Gary Wong and his teammates continued to train diligently four to five times a week.
But the team's hopes of competing in the tournament were dashed on Monday (Sept 7) when the International Floorball Federation (IFF) announced that the championship, which was supposed to be staged in Helsinki, Finland, would be postponed to next year owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
"We wanted this (the competition) to happen because we've been preparing for it for a while," said Wong, 27.
"To a certain extent, we are disappointed that this isn't happening, but we also didn't have high hopes that it would happen this year."
Earlier this year, the tournament's regional qualifier, which was scheduled for March 2-6 in Bangkok, was cancelled.
But Singapore had qualified for the tournament based on IFF's ruling that the top four teams - world No. 16 Singapore, Australia (13th), Thailand (14th) and Japan (17th) - would gain direct entry into the championship.
The men's team finished last among 16 teams in the 2018 edition of the tournament.
Given the lack of competitive action this year, captain Syazni Ramlee, 29, believes that the postponement of the men's WFC is a good thing.
He said: "If we were to play the world championship this year, it will not help us much because we don't have a sense of the competition so I think the postponement will be good for us because we have more time to prepare for it."
With the WFC now postponed to next year, the men's floorball team will likely compete in three tournaments in 2021.
The other two competitions are the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in May and the Asia Oceania Floorball Confederation Cup in the second half of the year.
Wong also feels that this could be beneficial for the team.
The defender said: "It helps in terms of the momentum because we are preparing for three competitions. Of course, there may be fatigue but it's not back to back so it would definitely help us because we are getting more experience under our belts."
