SIU is called the Swedish Development Bank's Development Model. Instead of dividing children by chronological age, as is the case in most sports, groups are more adapted to biological age. The idea is to get more young people to play longer.

- It is an attempt to start working in a different way when it comes to how children play floorball. We assumed that each individual's maturity level and skill level were more important than how old they are, says Anders Jonsson, development manager at the Swedish floor association.

Lots of research in various sports has shown the so-called Relative Age Effect - to put it simply, children born early in the year benefit from the calendar year breakdown system, because they have been able to develop more.

When a team elites at an early age, it is generally the early born who are selected, although there are exceptions. This is what the floor model wants to fix.

The model began to be introduced in the 2012/2013 season, what has it led to?

- But eight years may seem like a long time, but just getting this to become a normal business in the suburbs of Sweden takes time, says Anders Jonsson.

One effect the union has seen is that a greater proportion of autumn-born students apply to the country's NIU high school since the age was raised for games in the district team championships a few years ago, from 15 to 16 years.

- It has become more evenly distributed. We've seen it for a couple of years in a row. We believe it has to do with not being exhausted in connection with district team SM when applying for NIU nowadays.

The union is currently conducting a new relative age effect study to see if the effect is maintained.

The union has also made age shifts within the junior All-Swan and JSM and seen that more, especially girls, are playing floorball longer - past the age of 17, Jonsson says.

But not all clubs have adopted the new model. The valley in Umeå is one of those that still divides the law by age.

- We try to keep it to age groups as long as possible. We as an association must see how we should get as many people as possible to play. If anyone can show us that this model works, it is of course interesting, says Urban Karlsson, press officer.

SVT reported · Should sports children be divided according to maturity or age?

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