Physical and Anthropometric Characteristics Do Not Differ According to Birth Year Quartile in High-Level Junior Australian Football Players.

Paul Larkin,David B Pyne,Jade Haycraft,Carl T Woods

doi:10.3390/sports9080111

Paul Larkin, David B Pyne + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/sports9080111

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore differences in the physical fitness and anthropometric profiles between birth year quartiles of players attending the Australian Football League (AFL) National Draft Combine. Date of birth, anthropometric, 20 m sprint, vertical and running vertical jump, AFL planned agility, and 20 m Multi-Stage Fitness Test (MSFT) data were obtained for players selected to attend the Combine between 1999 and 2019 (n = 1549; Mage = 18.1; SDage = 0.3). The underlying density distributions of the data were visually explored using violin plots overlaid with box and whisker plots. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was then used to model the main effect of birth quartile (four levels) on the physical and anthropometric scores. Results showed that physical and anthropometric test scores did not significantly differ according to birth quartile (V = 0.008, F = 0.880, p = 0.631). We conclude that the physical and anthropometric profiles of high-level junior Australian Football players were similar according to birth year quartile across the modeled period. Therefore, how players utilize their physical and anthropometric attributes during game-play via contextualized, representative assessments, such as small-sided games, should be considered when examining potential causes of a RAE.

Highlights

Annual age-grouping policies are common across most team sports and involve organization of athletes into defined chronological age groups
The Australian Football League (AFL) participation pathway has two competition streams: the local participation pathway and the talent pathway that flows into the elite competition
While this study examined the influence of physical and anthropometric profiles on relative age effect (RAE) at the National Draft Combine over a substantial time period, the outcomes should be considered with respect to limitations

Summary

Introduction

Annual age-grouping policies are common across most team sports and involve organization of athletes into defined chronological age groups. The local participation pathway consists of age-grouped levels from Under (U) 10 years old to open age competition, with the talent pathway encompassing regional and development squads, state squads at the U14–U16 levels, and national squads at the U16–U18 levels, with players potentially selected for a professional senior club. Players identified as talented within the local participation pathway are selected by coaches and talent managers to join their regional team to compete in state-level competitions (see Woods [1]). The RAE is commonly observed in male invasion sports that require physical precocity, such as Australian football [3,5,6], basketball [7,8,9], ice hockey [10,11,12], rugby [13,14,15], and soccer [4,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]

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