Bandy Playing Rules is the name of the rule book for

bandy Bandy is a winter sport and ball sport played by two teams wearing ice skates on a large ice surface (either indoors or outdoors) while using sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team's goal. The international governing body for bandy is ...

, edited by the

Federation of International Bandy The Federation of International Bandy (FIB; french: Fédération internationale de bandy, russian: Международная федерация хоккея с мячом, sv, Internationella Bandyförbundet) is the international governing bo ...

. The rule book is available online. The current book was adopted in September 2013. The rule book and the rules are overseen by the

Rules and Referee Committee Rules and Referee Committee (RRC) is the group responsible for upholding and interpretation of the Bandy Playing Rules. The committee is a part of the Federation of International Bandy but is working independently. The committee is headed by a cha ...

History

The first rules for bandy was developed and written down in the late 19th century in England, by

Charles Goodman Tebbutt Charles Goodman Tebbutt (1860–1944) was an English speed skater and bandy player from Bluntisham, England, in the Fens of Cambridgeshire where Fen skating was a popular winter activity in the nineteenth century. He also wrote articles and b ...

, and later on in Russia. The two rule books had some differences but were similar enough that the game can be seen as being the same. At the time, the rules of

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

were also more similar with the bandy rules than they are today. The English rules of bandy were adopted in Sweden, Finland and Norway, where bandy survived while it died out in England and continental Europe in the early 20th century. In the 1930s, Sweden, Finland and Norway started to cooperate on the development of the rules, so they would be the same in all three countries. The demonstration of

bandy at the 1952 Winter Olympics Bandy was held as a demonstration sport at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo. A men's program was included but not a women's program. Sweden, Norway and Finland participated with their best players and won one match each. Sweden won the tourna ...

made Soviet Union interested in joining the international exchange and the three Nordic countries were invited to a friendly tournament 1954 in Moscow. By 1955 the four countries had agreed upon a common set of rules and International Bandy Federation was created, which since then has been the

governing body A governing body is a group of people that has the authority to exercise governance over an organization or political entity. The most formal is a government, a body whose sole responsibility and authority is to make binding decisions in a taken ge ...

for the sport, although it changed its name to Federation of International Bandy in the first decade of the 3rd millennium. Mostly the English rules prevailed, the most noteworthy exception being the 15 cm high border along the sidelines from the Soviet rule book.

References

{{Bandy rules