Footballistics by James Coventry

Author:James Coventry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2018-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

One aspect related to age that has changed significantly in the 21st century is the likelihood of an AFL draftee being born in a certain month. In recent years, books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics have highlighted how a disproportionate number of players in certain sporting competitions are born in the earlier months of the year. Known as the ‘relative age effect’, the bias is related to the cut-off dates used in junior sport. Gladwell pointed out that the cut-off for underage ice hockey in Canada was January 1, meaning that a player who turned 10 years old on January 1 could be playing against an opponent who didn’t turn 10 until the end of the year. At that age, the players who were more physically developed were often identified as better athletes, and thus had a greater chance of being selected in representative teams. ‘And what happens when a player gets chosen for a rep squad?’ wrote Gladwell. ‘He gets better coaching, and his teammates are better, and he plays fifty or seventy-five games a season instead of twenty games a season like those left behind in the “house” league, and he practises twice as much as, or even three times more than, he would have otherwise.’ Gladwell found that in every level of elite Canadian ice hockey, 70% of players were born between January and June, and 30% between June and December.

A similar bias was visible in the AFL during the earlier years of the draft. Our data shows that from 1993 to 2003, recruiters tended to opt for more mature bodies. Players born between January and April made up 38% of the draft cohort, and 44% of the top 10 picks. In 2004, the draft age was lifted slightly, with only players who turned 17 by April 30 in the year of the draft eligible to be selected. The relative age effect remained evident for the next five years, with draftees being far more likely to have been born in the first four months of the year. It only seemed to vanish after 2009, when the eligibility rule was again changed so that players had to be 18 by December 31 in their draft year.

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