In floor bandy’s F-league qualifiers, Tiikerit came from six goals behind in the final set and overtime to win over Niittomiehi from Liminga. The team will next fight for promotion against EräViikinkä.
The indoor bandy season is at its hottest when the playoffs are underway in the F-league and the first division is fighting for a place at the highest league level.
Tikkurila Tiikerit faced Liminga Niittomieht last night at home. The visiting team LNM went into the second period break with a clear 7–1 lead. However, the Tikkurila team won the match 8–7.
The Tiikerits took the fourth attack court to their use when starting the last set.
– Let’s press on the end board and make the game as difficult as possible for the opponent. Let’s forget the situation at halftime and take the opponent one goal at a time, Tiikerien head coach Pasi Rosti told Urheilu that his team talked in the locker room during the second halftime break.
The home team struck with a goal advantage right at the start of the final period, when Mattias Kokljuschkin shot to make it 2-7 after 31 seconds of play.
The Tigers fought goal by goal to close the gap until Leevi Loippo blasted the home crowd with his equalizer just 27 seconds before the final buzzer.
– I knew at that point that they were pretty close, Rosti remembers what he thought at the beginning of the third period, when LNM took overtime in a 3-7 situation.
Extra time was added to play seven minutes until Juuso Salo crowned the Tigers’ high night and the next place in the F-league qualifiers with his goal.
The full Tikkurila Sports Hall (523 spectators) witnessed the home team’s victory.
“I’ve never seen anything like this”
Juhani Järvenpää is a professional photographer who got lost in floorball and filming by chance at the Tikkurila Sports Hall 17 years ago, the same place where he was filming his more than 1,000 floorball matches yesterday.
– At the time (2007), I didn’t even have an SLR camera. I went to a women’s floorball match by chance, having never seen the sport before. To my own surprise, I discovered that I can photograph, Järvenpää recalls wondering more than a decade ago.
According to Järvenpää, in yesterday’s F-league qualifying match, Urheilutalo had all the elements of sports that make it memorable.
– In the best seasons, I have been filming more than 150 matches, and I have never seen a game like this.
Tiikerit won the match series against Liminka with a 3–1 victory.
In the second stage of the F-League qualifiers, the battle for a place in next season’s F-League will be fought between Tiikeri and EräViikinki. The match series starts on Friday (29.3), when ErVi hosts Tiikerei. The match series is played best of five.
EräViikingit finished second to last in the regular season of the F-League.
– The players are familiar on both sides, the match pair is even a derby to some extent. Shouldn’t we get full galleries for Mosahalli and the Sports Hall, Rosti said.
The second match pair of the second stage of the F-league qualification is M-Team–FBC Turku. The team from Turku finished as jumbo in the F-league this season.
The winners of the match pairs EräViikingit–Tiikerit and M-Team–FBC Turku will therefore play in the F-league next season.