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What’s the story?
In the light of recent allegations of age fudging in junior leagues, the AIFF a special committee meeting to discuss new norms for Age Verification Policy. The members also contemplated on various measures and formulated a strategy to curb age fraud in various age group competitions of AIFF.
In case you did not know
There have been previous accounts of age-fudging within regional football groups in India. Back in January, All India Football Federation (AIFF) disqualified teams from various age brackets for the same, like youth teams of Bengaluru FC, Jammu United FC and Ozone FC.
Football Delhi president, Shaji Prabhakaran also came forward with a firm stand on the matter, criticising this practice of age distortion.
The heart of the matter
The meeting, which was held at the Lalit hotel in Mumbai was attended by a number of dignitaries. Chairman of AIFF Medical Committee Vece Paes, Chairman of AIFF Disciplinary Committee Ushanath Banerjee, CEO I-League Sunando Dhar and COO AIFF Kishore Taid were all present in the meeting along with officials from FSDL.
During the meeting, Paes suggested implementing the most standard practice used in the sports industry i.e age verification on the basis of TW 3 (Tanner-Whitehouse) method, to which the members agreed to, unanimously.
There was also a unanimous decision to draft a new Age verification plan for various AIFF age group competitions, based on the TW 3 method, to be implemented from the 2018-19 season.
The meeting concluded with the suggestion of forming a new subcommittee which will solely be responsible to look into matters pertaining to age verification.
What’s next?
While it’s an extremely bold move on the part of AIFF, it still remains to be seen how accurately the policies are implemented. It would provide a boost to Indian football if the federation can succeed in maintaining a stringent environment regarding such fallacies.
