ArticleSports (Basel, Switzerland)2022
Happy Birthday? Relative Age Benefits and Decrements on the Rocky Road.
Article in Sports (Basel, Switzerland), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- The relative age effect among Malaysian university athletes: a cross-sectional survivorship analysis with exploratory AI-based movement screening.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- Biological maturity but not relative age biases exist in female international youth soccer players relative to the general population.Biology of sport · 2025Article
- Talent Identification: Time to Move Forward on Estimation of Potentials? Proposed Explanations and Promising Methods.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Review
- Relative age effect at Concacaf championships: Influence of sex, age, nationality, playing position, and playing status.PloS one · 2025Article
- Relative age effects in European soccer: their association with contextual factors, impact on youth national teams' performance, and presence at the senior level.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Looking beyond relative age to understand relative advantage and disadvantage in talent development.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Article
- Push and Pull Factors: Contextualising Biological Maturation and Relative Age in Talent Development Systems.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Special Issue "Talent Identification and Development in Youth Sports".Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Strategy in talent systems: Top-down and bottom-up approaches.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
(1) Background: There is abundant literature in talent development investigating the relative age effect in talent systems. There is also growing recognition of the reversal of relative age advantage, a phenomenon that sees significantly higher numbers of earlier born players leaving talent systems before the elite level. However, there has been little investigation of the mechanisms that underpin relative age, or advantage reversal. This paper aimed to investigate (a) the lived experience of relative age in talent development (TD) systems, (b) compare the experience of early and late born players, and (c) explore mechanisms influencing individual experiences. (2) Methods: interviews were conducted with a cohort of near elite and elite rugby union players. Data were subsequently analysed using reflexive thematic analysis and findings considered in light of eventual career status. (3) Results: challenge was an ever-present feature of all players journeys, especially at the point of transition to senior rugby. Psycho-behavioural factors seemed to be a primary mediator of the response to challenge. (4) Conclusions: a rethink of approach to the relative age effect is warranted, whilst further investigations of mechanisms are necessary. Relative age appears to be a population-level effect, driven by challenge dynamics.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.