The IFF President Tomas Eriksson celebrated his 50th birthday during the Women´s 9th World Floorball Championships.

But how did the President start his floorball career and what are his most memorable floorball moments?

- I started my floorball career by refereeing in Gothenburg as we had a floorball team in the regiment. According to the regulations each team that wanted to take part in the series needed to have two referees. No one actually wanted to referee, but as I wasn´t that good playing, I decided that I could be one of the players taking that responsibility.

The refereeing career then lasted until 1994 and included some interesting highlights:

- I actually refereed the first official Swedish final in 1990 between Jönköping and Lockerud and I also refereed two international matches, Sweden versus Switzerland and Switzerland against Finland. In those days you could referee a match even though your own country was playing.

The lack of neutrality started however to lead to conflicts between the nations:

- In my first international, the Sweden - Switzerland match, the participating nations could not agree from which country they would nominate the referees. This ended up with a mixed pair and I ended up refereeing my first international together with the Swiss referee Gregor Scheidegger.

Tomas Eriksson has been the IFF President since 1996 and much has happened within international floorball during the 17 years. What are his most memorable moments as IFF President?

- May 18th 1996 in Globen when 15 106 spectators watched the WFC final Sweden - Finland is a moment that I can always remember. I also remember when we got the provisional recognition by GAISF (nowadays called Sport Accord) in 2000, which opened doors for floorball to enter the international sports scene. And last but not least, July 2011, when we finally received the full recognition of the International Olympic Committee.

The Women´s WFC is now coming to an end and it is time to give an evaluation of the 9th Women´s World Floorball Championships in Czech Republic:

- First of all, I am really pleased that we have broken lots of spectator records. I am also pleased that we have broken different media records, as we have a great number of televised WFC matches and the number of media interest and journalists at the WFC has increased. In addition the gap between the top four teams and the top eight teams is narrowing, so I really look positively on the development of Women´s floorball and believe this is a great sport for girls and women.

The IFF President´s 50th birthday was celebrated today in the CEZ arena in Ostrava.