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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1516173
This article is part of the Research Topic 40 Years of Relative Age Effects in Sport: Lessons from the Past and Directions for the Future View all 7 articles

40 years of relative age effects: Life is not fair

Provisionally accepted
Roger Barnsley Roger Barnsley *
  • Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This paper reflects on RAE after almost 40 years since the publication of “Hockey success and birthdate: The relative age effect” (Barnsley, R., Thompson, A., & Barnsley, P. (1985). This first study reported large participation differences between the relatively older and younger players in the age grouping of elite players in both hockey and soccer. This study is then replicated using data from 2023. The comparison between 1983 and 2023 data for Major Junior A hockey in North America; the Under-17 World Soccer Tournament; and, the Under-20 World Soccer Tournament, demonstrates highly similar, if not identical relative age effects for all groups. For example, both studies have found that approximately 40% of elite, young adult players were born in the first quarter (Q1) of the age cohort, whereas only 10% of elite young players were born in the last quarter (Q4). This paper highlights the continuing privileging and disadvantaging produced by RAE and argues that more attention and priority must be directed towards understanding how to mitigate the unfair impacts of RAE in sports and education.

    Keywords: Hockey, Soccer, Replication, RAE, Relative age, mitigation

    Received: 23 Oct 2024; Accepted: 09 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Barnsley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Roger Barnsley, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada

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