Different sport, but there is a brilliant Brazilian documentary from a few years back made by Fernando Meirelles who directed City of God and The Constant Gardener.
It is called "Ginga: The Soul of Brasilian Football" and it focuses on young kids in various backgrounds in Brazil, and shows how they try to get into professional football.

One thing it touches on is how some of the best Brazilian footballers have come in all different shapes and sizes over the years, but how in modern day Brazil, you can not even get a trial at a club unless you are a certain height and build by 16 and you can run 100 meters within a certain time.

There is a certain truth in it, because 8 years later the Brazil team is full of tall, well built, athletic footballers, but they have lost that magic they once had and haven't won anything for a good few years.

As has already been touched upon, the thought process behind this, is that skills can be taught, but build, height, speed, athleticism cannot.

So at 183cm and 86kg, i'm a little short and lightweight, that actually makes me feel a lot better

Many of the best players in our league today - Burrow and Tomkins for two - have been told at some stage that they were too small. It's pretty lazy stuff and this idea that you can learn the core skills later is why the Aussies cane us at international level.

Tomkins was nearly let go at 16 by Wigan as they thought he wouldn't make it, some of that was due to his height and weight.

Your taller than Anthony Watmough (and not much lighter) and Paul Gallen. they wouldnt get a sniff in the massive Huddersfield pack.

Preston Campbell, how did he cope in the rough old NRL?

Avoided being tackled.

Perhaps if people spent less time studying body mass stats and a bit more time studying skills, we wouldn't be desperately trying to find an international half back pairing capable of timing a pass, and praying for Lee Briers recovery from injury.

Therein lies the very root of the problem.

If these small kids with great ball skills were so good then they would be running rings round the bigger guys and if the top clubs missed out on picking them up they would play their way through the lower leagues by showing how good they were.

Of course a few amateur coaches on here, know so much about junior RL, and unfortunately all of the professionals don't...

Yes and this is bull too, Brazil won nothing from 1970 to 1994 with all their skilful ball players and then they won World Cups in 1994 and 2002 with the likes of Dunga, Gilberto Silva and Kleberson playing grim defensive football and relying on one good striker up front (Romario or Ronaldo).

Its a shame they don't learn the Dutch way, focusing on ball skills from an early age as we are always told, and they have won fewer World Cups than England.

Lets see how the current generation of unskilful Brazilian athletes go on in the next World Cup....