The
Scottish Sun published an article recently on the use of bio-banding to
organise youth tournaments, you can read the article here if you are interested
(http://goo.gl/4lncmF). For those of you unfamiliar
with bio-banding it is a method of categorising young players based on their
biological rather than chronological age.
The suggested benefit being that players get to compete with peers who
are of a similar stature and mass making it easier (?) to spot those with
greater technical proficiency. Given the
financial incentives of nurturing talented young players within a club’s
academy system the notion of being able to steal a march on the competition is
appealing. However, is bio-banding the
way forward?
Before I
address the philosophical issues there are some important methodological
considerations which warrant a mention.
Firstly, assuming each child has a legitimate birth certificate,
chronological age is easily determined with a high degree of accuracy. Biological age on the other hand poses more
of a challenge. The most valid method is
to x-ray the wrist to determine skeletal age; some ethical questions exist
around this method, not to mention the associated expense. A number of surrogate markers have been
proposed, the most popular being an equation that uses mass, stature and seated
stature to predict the maturity offset and years from peak height velocity
(PHV). Interested readers can view the
original paper here (https://goo.gl/CI0AsO).
Whilst measures of stature and mass are accessible to most people it
does require a level of accuracy in how the measurements are taken. Furthermore, longitudinal data collection
improves the accuracy of the equation, compromising its use when used at a
single point in time prior to a tournament.
Finally, in every measure there is a degree of error; maturity offset is
no exception. Wherever you set your cut
off points (and this is as necessary when categorising players by biological as
it is chronological age) the error in the measure means that some individuals
will find themselves disadvantaged (or advantaged).
Putting
these methodological questions to one side there are philosophical issues which
are worth addressing. The tournament
reported by the Scottish Sun, to my knowledge, was for players already attached
to academy teams prompting the question, is bio-banding intended as a tool for
talent identification or talent development?
For players who have already been identified by a club (and signed) I
would expect coaches to track measures such as maturity status longitudinally
allowing them to factor this in when assessing rate of improvement (itself a
very subjective construct). For example,
if a club felt a specific player was too small we might expect then to cross
check maturity status before making any decisions regarding their future. Furthermore, I would suggest that for players
who are either larger or smaller than their peers, a number of options exist to
manage their development so that size is not a limiting factor. For example, a player who is large for their
age may have conditions placed upon them during training to limit how they use
their physicality; being constrained to interceptions rather than tackling to
regain possession of the ball. This
could be used in conjunction with short spells playing with older players of a
more comparable size. For smaller
players, once selected, playing and competing with larger and heavier peers may
be of benefit in the long term if they have a coaching team willing to give
them time to develop. Whether organising
training and matches according to bio-bands represents a more valid method than
those identified above in managing talented young players is of course
debatable and I would be interested to hear counter points.
Bio-banding
for talent identification purposes may be of more benefit. We know from recent studies that the relative
age effect exists within football, characterized by an over-representation of
chronologically older players.
Facilitating opportunities for players to compete against size matched
opponents, irrespective of age, may combat this. It should be remembered
however that although the relative age effect exists, there is limited evidence
to suggest that chronologically older players display superior physical
qualities, for example speed, agility and aerobic fitness. Whilst there may be benefits in bio-banding
there are also logistical issues in gaining anthropometric information prior to
trial games or large scale selection tournaments.
There is no
easy answer to this issue and I hope this does not discourage the pursuit of a solution. It does however, and this may not appeal to
the more scientifically minded, suggest a reliance on experienced scouts able
to see past the size and shape of young players and recognise their ability to
play the game effectively. Having spent
some time with an incredibly knowledgeable scout I would proffer that in this
instance there really is no substitute for experience and a well-trained ‘eye
for a player’.
