On a cloudy day in 1968, Sune Persson visited Kockum Fritid in Malmö. There he saw a small hollow plastic ball with a hole in it. He was told that it was used to practice golf indoors. Persson, who was a youth consultant at Korpen Malmö, thought that the ball could be played by the young people indoors. Said and done. At Kirsebergs Fritidsgård, Persson made sure that bandy was played with the small balls. The clubs were made of wood. It was hard and relentless for the legs. Especially when the clubs' winding of leather began to drop and the straps flickered. There were no rules. The new sport was called bandy golf. The rumor spread. Representatives from Rikskorpen came and saw the Malmö youths play. The sport began to gain a foothold.
Around 1970, a couple of Gothenburgers started importing plastic clubs that made the game more gentle on the legs. More and more schools, leisure centers and raven clubs around the country acquired equipment. Associations in other sports began to use the sport as a warm-up before their regular training sessions. The name of the sport still varied. In some places it was called land bandy while in other places it was called soft bandy or floorball.
- There are a thousand and one who have insisted that they came up with the idea for floorball. But from the beginning, it is a raven sport that was introduced in Malmö. I never thought it would be so big! tells Persson.
Today, there are over 125,000 licensed floorball players in Sweden spread over around 1,000 associations. Estimates say that almost half a million Swedes regularly play floorball in associations and in Korpen as well as in schools and workplaces. Floorball is played internationally in more than 60 countries and the sport's popularity is growing steadily around the world.
The challenge for floorball is now to join the Olympic sports. The road there is still long, but it is much shorter than Sune Persson could ever have imagined when in 1968 he looked down at his bruised narrow legs with a thoughtful look while he removed the wooden sticks one by one.
In short, good. Floorball was started, and Ongoal was founded, in Malmö - the hometown of floorball.