Sveriges Radio (SR) has spoken to the father and to one of the team’s coaches, thereby breaking the past week’s silence. Both deny that there is any truth to the unpleasant story.

The abandonment caused an outrage when it became public a week ago.

Another of the floorball team’s coaches, Conny Eriksson, told local newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning that he’d found the 10 year-old boy crying outside the arena.

According to Eriksson, the boy claimed his father had left him to walk the 76 kilometres between the Fyrishov sporting hall in Uppsala and the family home in Stockholm, as a punishment for a badly played floorball match.

Confusion now reigns, following SR’s interviews with both the father and the other coach, whose version of the story differs from Conny Eriksson’s.

“After the match was over, we were all gathering to go back to the cars. One of the players was annoyed after losing the game, and left the field,” said the coach to SR.

To protect the 10-year-old boy, both the coach and the father wish to remain anonymous.

“After a while I saw the boy outside one of the entrances to Fyrishov. When I started going towards him, he went inside. That’s when I took the decision to start packing the car with the bags,” said the coach.

The coach later saw the boy standing with Conny Eriksson, who had a mobile phone in his hand.

“That’s when I said to the boy that we were going home, and I drove him over to his father who was parked on the other side. And then we went home,” said the coach.

He describes the media reports of the past week as “absolutely appalling”.

“Everyone’s just gone along with the first source, without bothering to consider if the story’s plausible,” he said.

On Sunday the floorball club from Åkersberga, a suburb north of Stockholm, will be continuing their efforts to ascertain what exactly happened after the game last week.