All India Football Federation’s decision to revise ‘bone age’ eligibility criteria for junior and sub-junior leagues was prompted by the need to encourage participation since clubs would have struggled to field 18 players had the parameters remained unchanged, says Chairman of AIFF’s Sports Medical Committee Vece Paes.
The age limited were revised from 13.4 to 14 and 15.4 to 16 on the Tanner-Whitehouse3 (TW3) Test for the Under-13 and Under-15 leagues.
“Teams were struggling to field 18 players, so a lot of teams were swept up in this, so we wanted to encourage participation this time,” Paes said.
The former hockey Olympian stated that this has happened primarily because the teams had done the player registrations prior to the circulation of the detailed protocol document. As a result, teams registered quite a few players who were born in the first half of the calendar year of 2003 (TW3 test cut-off date for Junior League) and 2005 (TW3 test cut-off date for Sub-Junior League).
This, he said, was an one-time exception.
AIFF had introduced the TW3 tests midway through the league and several Maharashtra clubs had even threatened to pull out from the leagues if the parameters were not revised.
Paes said it was AIFF’s job to classify results as ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ and impose sanctions. “We are in the process of taking samples. I don’t want to comment too much on the results. We have looked at 6000 samples across the U13 and U15 leagues. The AIFF then took a look at the result and decide on what to do with them,” said Paes.
“We need much more data because there could be a marginal difference in bone age in two players with the same chronological age, up to six months. Across India, children develop differently, so we need to look at standardisation of data,” Paes explained.
To address this issue, as per the suggestion of Dr. Paes and other committee members, the AIFF League Committee revised the existing bone age eligibility criteria from ‘13.40’ to ‘14.00’ for the Hero Sub-Junior league and from ‘15.40’ to ‘16.00’ for the Hero Junior league.
— AIFF's press release stating that limits had been changed.
The former hockey Olympian also said that instead of banning players, the AIFF had taken a call to push them into the next age category.
The discussion around age fraud in Indian football was re-ignited due to the Gaurav Mukhi saga, but Paes says there is a need for stigma to be removed from the players.
“Age verification is viewed as cheating. How do I develop you if I don’t know your skills? Players occupy different positions. You start building strength at 12, you start building skills at 10. At that age, no player is a cheat. The system is at fault,” Paes exclaimed.
Paes, who also conducted age verification tests for the Indian cricket board, emphasised on the importance of educating players and parents on the crippling effects of age fraud and the need to check such practices in Indian football.
“We’re trying to have a happy situation, you’re dealing with them [players] so that they stick with football. If they fear they’re going to be labelled a failure, and a newspaper reports it, that’ll drive people away from the game. They wouldn’t want to play the game after that. They’re not cheating, it’s the adults who are,” said Paes insisting that the players were not the only ones to blame for age fraud.