Walsh, Luke (2024) Investigating the implementation of a maturity-based correction factor on linear sprint performance testing measures within professional academy football. Masters thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

Talent identification involves teams identifying and developing young talented players to ensure sporting success and financial survival (Williams & Reilly, 2000; Ford et al., 2020). Academy football is commonly split into chronological age groups (e.g., U12s, (Lloyd et al., 2014) which fails to consider differences within biological maturity (Hogan et al., 2022) and anthropometric measures (e.g., body mass (~50%; Hannon et al., 2020). These differences have often benefitted early maturing players who display superior power, speed and strength (Towlson et al., 2022).

Previous research has shown that early maturing athletes can make up as many as 72% of youth soccer cohorts (Sweeney et al., 2023), with later maturing players often becoming absent from talent development pathways (Hill et al., 2020). The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) was introduced with the aim of developing more and better home-grown players, enabling the creation of national databases relating to performance measures (EPPP, 2011). However, these measures often favour early maturing players, with significant associations between maturation status and sprint performance being reported (Fink et al., 2023; Itoh & Hirose, 2020). Therefore, the present study aimed to; a) identify the association between maturity status and sprint performance across in two elite English academy football teams, b) develop and apply a correction factor to account for individual player maturation. Maturation status (expressed using maturity offset in days) had a significant correlation with sprint performance in U13s, U14s and U15s age groups. Maturation status accounted for 30.6%, 25.6% and 42.8% of the variation seen within 30m sprint times in those age groups.

Following the correction procedure a new sprint time was calculated which successfully removed the maturity associated differences associated with each data point. This procedure has the potential to improve player evaluation enabling coaches to make better informed decisions regarding player (de)selections.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > GV0557 Sports G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > GV0861-1017 Ball games: football, etc.
School/Department:	School of Science, Technology and Health
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/12002

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