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Floorball is to be included as a demonstration sport during December's 27th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Myanmar.

The decision to include the sport during the Games, which are being held from 11th to 22nd December, was made at the recent Southeast Asian Games Federation (SEAGF) Council in Myanmar.

Played indoors, floorball is a hybrid of field and ice hockey. A developing game across Asia, out of the 11 SEA Games countries, five are currently International Floorball Federation (IFF) members; Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Though the game has not previously been played in Myanmar, the news that it will be included as a demonstration sport might pave the way for the setting up of a floorball association in the country.

Established in Sweden in the early 1980s, the sport has spread all over the world and it is now played in over 60 countries.

The IFF explain that "during the 30 years of floorball history, the development and growth of the sport has been amazing.

"Floorball is the fastest growing sport in a number of countries and now has a total of 300,000 licensed players and approximately 2 million recreational players in the world.

"There are no signs that this positive development would slow down in the near future. Although floorball is a professional sport amongst the elite players requiring their fulltime involvement, it is still also a sport for all.

"Floorball is widely played in schools, among youth and adult recreation and corporate sports groups and it has become the alternative team sport for both men and women in a number of countries."

The recent SEAGF Council meeting confirmed that a total of 33 sports will be contested at this year's SEA Games, which are to be hosted in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw.

Among other demonstration sports to be included at this year's Games are body building, traditional boat race, chess, pencak silat, vovinam, petanque, muay thai and shorinji kempo.

The compulsory sports at the SEA Games are athletics (track and field, walk and marathon) and aquatics (swimming and diving).

The second category of sports - those that are contested at the Olympics and Asian Games are made up of archery, badminton, billiards and snooker, boxing, basketball, canoeing, cycling, equestrian, football, futsal, golf, hockey, judo, karatedo, rowing, sepak takraw, shooting, sailing, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling and wushu.

A total of 460 gold, 460 silver and 637 bronze medals are up for the grabs in the biennial meet.

The Singapore Floorball Association advised Singapore based news service AsiaOne that floorball will likely be included in the program of the 2015 SEA Games in Singapore.

For more information go to www.seagfoffice.org/

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