The Dutch lost to Slovakia in the play-offs, but the players can be proud of themselves. The Netherlands qualified for the World Floorball Championships for the first time in ten years and immediately enriched their participation by advancing from the group stage. According to captain Marissa Meijer, this success may help the growth of floorball in her home country.
Marissa, how do you feel now? I know you lost, but on the other hand, you can be proud of yourselves. Your first appearance in ten years and you made it to the play-offs.
Of course, I’m sad about the loss right now. We played a great game. The Slovaks played well, but we showed them that we can fight. I think we proved to the world that we belong among the top sixteen, now even twelve, teams in the world, and we’ll be ready for our last match. I’m very proud of our team. We’ve fought hard in recent years to get here, and now we’re here and we have nothing to be ashamed of.
The Netherlands is known for its successes in field hockey. How popular is floorball in your country? You had absolutely amazing fan support.
We are very happy to have fans because we really need them. We can always count on their support. Floorball is not very popular in the Netherlands yet. A lot of people don’t even know what it is, so it’s difficult for us to try to popularize it in any way. And yet here we are, participating in the World Floorball Championships. But it’s complicated. We need to pay ourselves if we want to be there. But that just shows how much we love the sport.
And yet you managed to fight your way into the play-offs. You even led for a while in the match against Slovakia. Do you think this success could help popularize the sport?
I hope so. Thanks to the fact that we made it here, there has been a little more coverage of floorball in the Netherlands. We made the news, which doesn’t happen very often. It would be nice if a child saw us in the news, or even an adult woman or man, and thought it was an interesting sport that they would like to try.
How will you prepare for the last matches?
We’ll rest so that we’re full of energy again and determined to get the best possible place. Whoever we will face, we want to win. We have nothing to lose, so we want to fight hard.