The age of retirement within the AFL is decreasing at a rapid rate. Players nearing and beyond the age of 30 are seen as past their prime and a liability to clubs.
The emergence of sport science and player monitoring is leading decisions to be made by scientific evidence. Whether science will always provide the right answer or not, athletes possess intangible qualities unmeasurable by GPS trackers or heat sensors.
Athletic traits such as talent, motivation and leadership may potentially be assessable through psychometric testing but can be proven wrong. Early retirements in the AFL are now frequently attributed to physical stress on the body or loss of desire to play.
Whether these are legitimate reasons is questionable, as there are a plethora of players told by their clubs they will be making way for younger players. This emergence of ‘youth policy’ to rebuild a club in a quick a time as possible is another trend bought upon courtesy of sports science.
Youth policy has yet to prove a drastic turnaround from ladder dweller into a premiership contender. Several clubs lack leadership and experience to guide youngsters which in a way, draws out their learning curves even more. Coaches have a role in guiding youngsters but at the end of the day, the players will be much closer with fellow teammates than their coach.
One example we can look at is Geelong.
In a year where they have won the premiership, they have also pumped a significant amount of games into youngsters. Chris Scott’s policy to play four players with fewer than 50 games experience has seen Mitch Duncan, Daniel Menzel, Alan Christensen, Trent West, Nathan Vardy and Taylor Hunt flourish playing alongside the professional Geelong unit.
Much praise has been attributed to recruiting manager Stephen Wells who has consistently delivered quality players with low draft picks, but perhaps the club itself has a lot more to do with the success than Wells.
With established leaders in Cameron Ling, Matthew Scarlett and Cameron Mooney driving youngsters to prepare and perform as they do, the culture of the club has the ability to turn an average player into a superstar.
When a highly credentialled player like Ling, or for argument’s sake Luke Power or Chad Cornes, retires while still in the top 20 players at the club, their influence on club culture and player mentoring is lost. This influence is not measurable by sport science and illustrates the importance of keeping professional veterans at the club for the sake of culture and learning.
Retirees this year including Ling (30), Leigh Brown (29), Chad Cornes (31), Dean Brogan (32), Luke Power (31), Brady Rawlings (30) and Ben Hudson (32) are all capable of playing on but most have made way for younger players. Most have plans to pursue careers beyond football while others will be joining Greater Western Sydney to play on.
It wasn’t that long ago that the retirement age of players was around 34, but now clubs refuse to take risks associated with older players by only offering players one year contracts after their 30th birthday.
If a veteran has a bad season or an injury-plagued one, this give clubs no responsibility to keep them at the club. It becomes a cut-throat business as Luke Power learned. That said, Power’s season was very respectable and he was still in the top handful of players at Brisbane.
Within the veteran fraternity, Dustin Fletcher (36), Simon Black (32), Adam Goodes (31), Matthew Scarlett (32) and Brent Harvey (33) are still in the best handful of players at their clubs. Just because the game has become faster, it does not mean older players cannot adapt. Cameron Ling, probably the slowest midfielder in the competition, still managed to keep Dane Swan to 20 touches in the grand final.
Although his retirement is highly admirable, few doubt Ling had more years in him.
Taking a look at other sports, a significant amount of ice hockey, baseball and American football players play well into their mid-thirties. In the golden age of football when physicality was at its peak, Michael Tuck played two years of reserves before 428 VFL games, retiring at 37.
Sport science is providing us with some fantastic statistics and information about players but its role in bringing down the age of retirement across the AFL is seeing decisions made too heavily based on scientific evidence at the expense of intangible qualities.
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