An eye for talent: The recruiters' role in the Australian Football talent pathway.

Paul Larkin,Damian Farrow,Fabrizio Perroni,Daryl Marchant,Amy Syder

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0241307

Paul Larkin, Damian Farrow + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241307

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Abstract

Talent identification and recruitment (TIR) in elite sport is a complex process with performance and career longevity implications for athletes, sports organisations, and scouts (hereafter referred to as recruiters). Although there is an established body of published research on TIR the critical roles that recruiters perform has only recently gained attention from researchers. In this study, we report on the practices that 12 full time Australian Football recruiters use to inform their TIR decisions. Inductive qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted using open-ended questions. Thematic analysis resulted in the identification of four primary themes (the recruiter, processes and practices, assessment and selection). The results and discussion provide insights and an occupational 'road map' into the important role recruiters perform in sporting organisations.

Highlights

The process of talent identification and recruitment (TIR) is about making informed decisions to select the most promising athletes, with best potential to excel as an elite athlete [1,2,3,4]
This study sought to understand the dynamic process of talent identification in Australian football
The findings provide a detailed description of Australian Football recruiter’s knowledge and practice associated with the assessment and selection of youth athletes

Summary

Introduction

The process of talent identification and recruitment (TIR) is about making informed decisions to select the most promising athletes, with best potential to excel as an elite athlete [1,2,3,4]. Retrospective assessments of draft selection outcome are essentially examining predictive validity because initial draft rankings are being assessed as predictors of specific criterion outcomes (e.g., sport-specific performance measures, career longevity or other relevant variables). In an attempt to examine specific predictive indices researchers have assessed numerous variables (i.e., physical; anthropometric; technical and psychological) that may differentiate between selected vs nonselected athletes or successful vs unsuccessful athletes [8,9,10,11,12,13].

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