Background. The South African Rugby Union has adopted the model of competition at a young age (U13 years) to identify talent. There is concern however that bigger players who mature early are selected at this age, and that the majority of these players do not play rugby at a high level after puberty.

Objectives. The aim of this study was to establish how many players in the 2005 U13 Craven week (n=349) participated in subsequent U16 Grant Khomo and U18 Craven week tournaments.

Design. Longitudinal.

Results. 31.5% of the players who played in the U13 Craven week, were again selected to play at U16 Grant Khomo week and 24.1% were selected for the U18 Craven week.

Conclusion. Seventy-six per cent of the players selected for the U13 tournament do not play at the U18 national Craven week tournament. These data need to be considered when decisions are made about the cost-effectiveness of staging the U13 tournament, particularly if the main goal of this tournament is for talent identification.

Off the 20 kids I know who were stars at 13 I would say.
5 no longer play any sport
5 no longer play football (picked for everything school, local + state)
5 play local prems (picked for everything school, local + state)
1 plays NPL Youth (picked for everything school, local + state +++++)
2 plays NPL( 1 picked and dropped school, local, state+++) (1 picked only school but at a high level)
1 plays overseas (never picked for anything until 15 then picked for state , NPL )

So is that a 75 -80 % failure rate to select correctly or to miss manage talent?

Did they all develop a love of the game, or as is quite common down under in that they just play the
game but give up when no accolades come their way.