LOCKERROOM:The month of the year one is born in can have long-term implications in the area of sport, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

YOU HAVEN'T been around a GAA club much if you have never been in a discussion, row or sulk over the issue of "playing up". Playing up is what happens when the five or six best players from the under-10s are drafted into the under-11s with a view to strengthening the latter, especially for big matches with the visigoths from down the road.

If your child is an under-11 and loses a place on the team due to the influx of gnarly under-10s well, the chances are that you will think the practice of playing up is a source of much of the evil in the world. This column has come to realise that you are almost literally correct.

On the other hand, if your child is an under-10 and is playing up with the under-11s (and, impossibly glamourous this, perhaps the under-12s as well) you will undoubtedly feel that playing up is the way forward for the club and for humanity in general. Possibly you will already have bought a knee-length anorak with an Umbro logo on the back so that you can look more managerial while the fruit of your loins illuminates the playing field.

Personally, I have always been all in favour of playing up provided it isn't used as an excuse for not coaching. Not enough though. I hadn't thought it through.

It's true that it is common to see larger clubs in Dublin now cherry-picking the best and most naturally talented kids from their A and B teams at one age group and from the A and B teams a year below and just sticking them out onto the field while all the other kids are parked in a field with a ball and told to call an adult if anybody inadvertently does something skilful. Progressive conversation about the plight of these unfortunates can often include the expression of the notion that these might just be the committee members of tomorrow who are grazing over there in a corner of the juvenile pitch. Perhaps somebody should go see if they are alright.

What is interesting about the whole issue is how it runs contrary to what we believe about how sport for kids should be and yet replicates the sort of experiences and influences which seem to make successful athletes. Both sides of the argument are right in a scenario where we eventually have to recognise that sport is at some age level going to become competitive and that some are going to thrive and some are going to be left behind.

In an ideal world the under-12s would have been bonded together in the smithy of the game that is the mini-leagues. Johnny's weak left side would be worked upon as much as little DJ's occasional difficulty in applying top spin to the sliotar from his longer range frees. The under-12s wouldn't care if they won or lost so long as there was a refreshing glass of spring water and a stick of celery for them back in the positively re-enforcing environment of the club house when they got back.

The sight of the visigoths making off with medals clanking and cars beeping for their coke and crisps would produce nothing but amused smiles and indulgent shakes of the head from the under-12 side who knew the big picture.

Everyone would be encouraged and cajoled and the social players would pause for thought and ask themselves if their casual attitudes weren't holding back friends of theirs.

Of course, in the real world some kids only play because their pals play or because their parents make them or because they are bored or because Mammy sees the GAA club as a free baby-sitting service.

Other kids are at Billy Barry or at karate or seeing their probation officers most of the time while their peers are training. Still others among them desperately want to play but by the time the earnest coach gets to look them over they have such bad habits and such under-developed co-ordination that they are a danger to themselves and others.

So in order that those who are keen and able might discover exactly why is is that we keep scores (we are trying to find a winner) a batch-load of lean and hungry under-11s are brought in to bolster the lean and hungry nucleus of the under-12s. The club, which is engaged in a process of natural selection with a view to turning out good seniors down the line, seldom objects to this.

Indeed if you grow up in a little rural village playing up isn't a concept related to choice or tactics. It's demographics. It is what happens when there is nobody else around.

Story after story after story from elite players who grew up in rural areas begins with the tale of finding oneself playing for the under-12s "when I was eight". There was no choice in the matter. You got stuck in the corner-forward or corner-back spot or between the posts and that was it. Sink or swim kiddo. You played on every team it was feasible to include you on. If you were good enough you were old enough and if you were needed just to make up the numbers then you were old enough too. And in the evenings? You went down the field and pucked around.

(Studies in Australia and north America have found that if you grow in the middle of nowhere you have a far better chance of making it as an elite sports person than you do if you grow up in the teeming suburbs where every team is filled out with more players than can be coped with.)

What is interesting though in terms of the "playing up" debate is the issue of who gets to play up. In sports where the age limit is decided by the calendar year those born in January, February and March have a much greater chance of success than those born later in the year.

A child born in January will not necessarily have a physiological advantage over a child born in November or December of the same year but there is usually sufficient developmental head start there for other factors to start kicking in. Enough so that across the board in sport "the relative age effect" is a phenomenon.

A kid with an early performance advantage is likely to benefit from the increased confidence you get from being perceived to be competent. He or she will work harder whereas a child not in receipt of such boosters is more likely to quit sport before the age of 12.

In Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, where he examines the business of being successful he notes the 10,000 hour rule which effectively confirms the old saw about perspiration being many times more important than inspiration.

Those who are good at just about any sport, good to the point of forming part of an elite, practice more hours than those who are average. In sport, those who get the benefit generally of being on extra teams and getting extra training, etc, are those who are born early in the cut-off year for their sport.

I have, for example, on the wall beside me a list of the names, addresses and birth dates of the 32 players who were on the Dublin under-14 camogie panel last year. Twenty-two of the girls were born in the first half of the year. A third of them in the first three months, more in January than in any other month, and none at all were born in November or December of 1994.

This is entirely consistent with examples that Gladwell quotes from organised team sports. Canadian ice hockey has a chronic problem in that its under-age system is so competitive from such a young age that those born earliest receive a hugely disproportionate amount of attention.

US basketball on the other hand is relatively unaffected because courts are so plentiful and casual play is a part of the norm.

What does it all mean?

In a country where we are perhaps too earnest about our sport, there are very few pursuits which allow for the consistent casual practice suburban basketball does. And second, there is very little mention of minor hurling in the Bible. Now you know why.

December 25th is a terrible date to be born on. If the three wise men had been a little smarter they would have delayed, not got there sooner and thus delayed the onset of labour till early January.

And the world would be a different place now.