The assessment of perceptual-cognitive and decision-making abilities for the prediction of talent in Australian rules football

Talent identification (TID) is a vital component within the recruitment process for all sporting bodies and organisations. Given the considerable influence it may have on the success of a team, substantial resources are invested in identifying young athletes with the most potential for the development of expertise. Successful performance in team sports requires an athlete to have a unique combination of physical, technical and tactical skills. Such a combination allows athletes to compensate for different areas of weaknesses in the dynamic nature of game play. However, traditional TID does not allow athletes to showcase this multi-factorial element, but instead utilises mono-dimensional approaches, such as testing only physical fitness. Thus, forecasting longitudinal performance based upon one element of effective play (e.g. physical), fails to provide sufficient information for selectors to make informed decisions and leads to biased identification. In addition, TID uses a subjective assessment for the tactical decision-making performance, whereby recruiters watch game footage to determine a player’s decision-making ability based on their own perspectives and experiences. This type of assessment is problematic as it leaves assessments open to conscious or below conscious biases, due to conflicting opinions of what constitutes good play. The purpose of the current Doctoral study was to address the current limitations in talent identification practices and explore accessible additions to the current battery of tests, with an emphasis on decision-making. This thesis examines the tactical decision-making skill requirements within Australian Rules (AR) football to identify underlying mechanisms of elite decision-making. To achieve this, we measured eye-movement behaviour and related verbal explanations for decisions. The research presented in this thesis is divided into three studies. The first study (Chapter 2) explores perceptual-cognitive and decision-making skills in elite senior AR football players. This is followed by a longitudinal study (Chapter 3) which examines perceptual-cognitive and decision-making skill for elite junior AR football players across an eighteen-month time period. These studies form the foundation for the proposed testing items in study three which is a proof of concept, outlining a protocol design that quantifies perceptual-cognitive and decision-making skill in a manner not used in current AR football TID testing programs. The research findings contribute an important body of research to the study of TID by providing a conceptually translatable means through which the development of an objective protocol design approach can be undertaken in the future, thus ensuring that objective measurements of all determinants of game play are assessed and in turn creating a more comprehensive TID procedure