Girish Mahajan (Editor)

England Bandy Federation

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
England Bandy Federation

The England Bandy Federation is the governing body of the sport of bandy in England. It is based in The Fens part of Cambridgeshire, East Anglia. Formerly, the federation was named Bandy Federation of England, but after some years with less activity, the federation was restarted and given the present name in January 2017.

The Federation has the purpose to have a full-size indoor bandy field in the Littleport Ice Stadium, which is being built at present (2017). Apart from that, rink bandy will be arranged where there are no full-size bandy rinks.

Bandy has a proud history in England. England is seen as one of the sport's birthplaces, beside Russia where a similar game developed simultaneously, but modern bandy is based more on the English rules. The first English governing body for bandy, the National Bandy Association, was founded in 1891. The first rules were written down by Charles Goodman Tebbutt in 1882.

The match which was later dubbed the original bandy match, was a match held at the Crystal Palace in London in 1875. However, at the time, the game was called "hockey on the ice", probably as it was considered an ice variant of field hockey. The first international match took place in 1891 between the English Bury Fen Bandy Club and Haarlemsche Hockey & Bandy Club, the present HC Bloemendaal from the Netherlands. The same year, the National Bandy Association was started in England. England national bandy team won the 1913 European Bandy Championships in Davos, Switzerland, where national teams from eight countries played. Following the outbreak of the First World War, the interest for bandy vanished in England and the National Bandy Association was discontinued. There is now a renewed interest in the sport steered by the new England Bandy Federation - EBF.

References

England Bandy Federation Wikipedia