Milan Bína is a 27-year-old player whose story as a floorballer is quite remarkable. FloorballToday writer and expert Petr Havej interviewed him after a game.

Bína is a floorball player at the Czech Sokol Královské Vinohrady, with seven points in eight games at 9th place in the Superliga ranking. If SKV wants to reach the playoffs, they have to climb at least one more spot, but for the team, it might perhaps be more important to stay in the league – not relegating – than reaching the playoffs.

Havej spoke with Bína after the game against Tatran, currently ranked 11th.

Bína started his career well, with his breakthrough season in the Czech Superliga in Season 14/15 with Sokol Královské Vinohrady. A year later, he achieved his point maximum in Season 15/16 with 42 points. Along with that came an invitation to the national team training, although he never had his debut game.

After that, he transferred to Sparta Praha and had another good 20-goal season. However, at the start of the following season (17/18) he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He managed to get through the illness and the treatment went well. Bína came back at the end of the season but it was only a brief appearance.

His proper comeback was the following season (18/19) where he played 24 league games for Sparta (including playoff games) but didn’t have a lot of playtime due to the lack of fitness. Before this season Milan Bína transferred back to Sokol Královské Vinohrady, where he had his prime years, and he is doing good so far with seven games played and five points.

Interview

In this interview, Bína talks about this and last season, his comeback after the illness, his floorball career and his trasfer back to Vinohrady. The interview was made after his team SKV beat Tatran Střešovice 3-1 in a battle for important points, Bína had 1 assist.

What do you think of the game?

A typical weekday game: we had come from work or school and had to switch our minds to the game. I think we managed to do so better than our opponent. The game level was not very high, it didn’t really come to the league standard.

You came back after a long illness last year and played some games for Sparta. How did you feel last season and how do you feel today?

Last season was horrible after the comeback. It took me the whole season to get the fitness I lacked. This year I’m feeling better. I’ve been working hard this summer. But I need to keep up the work, I still feel slow, no stamina. I know the aspects I need to work on.

Does the illness physically limit you somehow?

It has been two years already, so it is coming back to normal. That I feel more tired is more because of the lower physical fund than my health problems in the past.

Your goal in the past was to be in the national team and to play abroad – specifically in Switzerland. Is it still the same or did it shift?

It has shifted I guess. During the break I had because of the illness, I managed to finish my studies and started working. It is getting harder and harder to combine top-level sport with my work, so my priorities have shifted a bit, floorball is not the only thing in my life anymore.

Of course, I still love the sport, I really like to be around the boys in the team and to get away from the everyday life. Playing abroad is not a real thing for me right now, maybe only if it were through the job offer, I can see myself trying that.

As far as the national team, I don’t think I am good enough anymore. You can see the boys we are playing against here, they are 17 years of age or something and they are better than me in every aspect. I feel it is too late for me now for the national team.

You have transferred back to Vinohrady from Sparta before the season. Are you content with the transfer?

Yeah. I was wondering before the season whether to even continue at the top level or not. As I said, it is hard for me to spend so much time with the sport. I thought the only thing that makes sense to me was to go to the well-known environment for me, somewhere, where I would not have to spend 4 or 5 months just getting used to the new club, getting to know the team, the tactics. And it really felt like I never left the team when I came back here to Vinohrady, I still know the boys here and that was an important thing for me.

I considered some offers from lower leagues, but this was really the only thing that made sense to me. I didn’t want to go back to lower leagues, even to my home club Pelhřimov, because the time one needs to spend practicing is quite the same nowadays as in the top level, and I think I would not enjoy spending so much time just to play just for fun in lower leagues.

I am happy that I could come back to Vinohrady and we will see what is it going to be. There are good weeks, there are worse weeks, up and down like everything.

You beat Tatran Střešovice today and managed to get ahead of them in the table. What do you think of this season, from your team’s perspective and your own perspective?

From my own perspective, it is 50/50. There are games that I feel I am valuable for the team, then there are games I got benched (justly) when we change to only two lines for the last minutes. But the important thing is that we are collecting points, it doesn’t matter who’s on the court.

I think our team is not built around a few stars, we have fifteen even boys and everyone can be the important person at the end of the game. Besides the big blow-up against Bohemians this Sunday [9-3 loss], we manage to follow instructions of our coaches and I think it’s going well.

We have eight points after seven games, it’s not too bad. We need to keep up, October is a key month for us, we have some games against the teams we expect to be around our position, like Tatran, Liberec or Pardubice.

If we manage to collect all of the points, I believe the season could be successful, but I don’t want to make predictions. We want to focus on the next match every time. We blew up at Bohemians, now we succeeded against Tatran, maybe we’ll blow up again next time.

Unfortunately, it seems we’re not able to be somehow consistent, that is where we need to get better.

Table

The table of Tipsport Superliga looks like this after a quarter of the regular season (matches/points). Vinohrady is at 9th place now.

1. Technology Florbal MB 7/21

2. ACEMA Sparta Praha 7/19

3. FAT PIPE FLORBAL CHODOV 7/18

4. 1. SC TEMPISH Vítkovice 7/14

5. FbŠ Bohemians 7/11

6. Hu-Fa PANTHERS OTROKOVICE 7/11

7. FBC 4CLEAN Česká Lípa 7/10

8. FBC Liberec 7/8

9. TJ Sokol Královské Vinohrady 7/8

10. FBC ČPP OSTRAVA 7/7

11. Tatran Teka Střešovice 7/7

12. BLACK ANGELS 7/7

13. Sokoli Pardubice 7/3

14. FBŠ Hummel Hattrick Brno 7/3

This article was written by Petr Havej. If you have any questions or remarks, feel free to contact us.

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