December madness for Singapore women’s floorball team with world c’ship and SEA Games

SINGAPORE – A hectic schedule awaits the Singapore women’s floorball team in December, with two major events on the calendar – the Women’s World Floorball Championship and SEA Games – set to overlap at the end of the year.

Singapore were crowned champions of the women’s Asia-Oceania Floorball Confederation (AOFC) qualifiers on March 22 and booked their spot to the world tournament, held in the Czech Republic from Dec 6 to 14. They finished 12th in the 2023 edition in a repeat of their best-ever result.

The 16-team event will clash with the Dec 9-20 SEA Games in Thailand, where the Singaporean women will be aiming for a fourth consecutive title. The dates for the floorball competition in Bangkok have not been confirmed.

Singapore women’s coach Tan Yi Ru says that retaining the SEA Games gold remains their priority.

He said: “For the association, the most important thing is, of course, the SEA Games, and the planning has to be a lot better from the coaching side.

“We are focusing on the Games and I think we are on point, but when we meet Thailand, it will still be a tough one.

“Three major injuries (at the last world championship) were unfortunate and we will do our best to minimise that as much as we can.”

Singapore Floorball Association president Ben Ow believes that both tournaments are equally important, adding that it will find a way to mitigate the schedule overlap.

He added: “We are lucky because we have two squads – the Under-19 and seniors to choose from. So now the technical director has to decide and plan how we split the load.

“That is the approach that we are taking right now and not to zero in too early, because it’s also about the peaking cycle, and we need to base on that to be able to then make the selection nearer to the date.”

The women’s team faced a similar problem in 2019 when the world championship in Switzerland (Dec 7 to 15) and SEA Games in the Philippines (Nov 30 to Dec 11) were held in the same period.

They finished 12th at the world event then and won gold at the Games.

The schedule clash has seen SEA Games hosts Thailand pulling out from the world championship in order to focus on the biennial Games. Their men’s team won gold in Cambodia in 2023, while the women had to settle for silver after a 4-2 loss to Singapore in the final.

Thailand coach Kenneth Koh said: “We came into this tournament knowing that we probably won’t go for the world championship.

“We wanted to have as much experience as we could for this team in preparations for the SEA Games. We still have a couple of months before the Games start, so the work starts tomorrow.”

On March 22 at Our Tampines Hub, Singapore beat Thailand 5-0 in the final of the AOFC qualifiers, courtesy of goals from Siti Khairul Anuar, Shannon Yeo, Nasha Jeffri, Jerelee Ong and Ong Swee Ling.

The top-three teams will earn a ticket to the world championship but Thailand’s withdrawal meant that the fourth-placed team will head to the Czech Republic instead.

In the earlier dead rubber third-place play-off, Japan narrowly edged Australia 5-4 to claim the bronze.

Singapore captain Shermaine Goh said: “It is still some time away, and definitely there will be some competition from our younger (teammates), so it doesn’t mean that we will slow down from here.

“We will just keep going to become better, and we will make the SEA Games an exciting one, and hopefully bring back our fourth gold.

“Since it’s back to back, we will definitely gain momentum, because that’s what we managed to do in 2019... From now till then, we have a lot of time to build on our fitness and to strengthen ourselves and to better condition our body, so I believe we’ll be prepared by then.”