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.

You only have to look at Myler & Michael Monaghan two fairly small in height players but Monas is a tackle monster and Myler is Lao developing into a similar type of solid one on one tackler. Small is beautiful and that's a fact. Don't believe me. Look at Gareth Hock!

I don't think there's much doubt that the style of the game these days calls for a relatively uniform RL player in terms of build and skills, as opposed to distinct body sizes and attributes between backs, half-backs and forwards.

Most tries, and breaks tend to come from tackle busts or overlaps these days, as opposed to dummies, chip kicks, sidesteps AS WELL as tackle busts, overlaps.

We're more fortunate than most in Tony Smith's philosophy but players and skills generally are much more generic - that may be down to those kind of players being ignored as too small, too risky, too suspect defensively or coaches focussing on defence and weight training against skills work.

Its called full time professionalism. The game is faster and more intense than it was back then.

In the amateur game there are still players of all different sizes.

According to the book I am reading "The Gold Mine Effect", you need the correct genes to succeed, but simply having those genes is not enough. The 'correct genes' means that its not much use being 5 feet tall if you wan't to be a basketball player, or having short fingers if you wan't to be an international pianist. And if you are a runner, you need plenty of 'fast twitch muscle' for sprinting.

There are quite a few other factors that are essential, but practice / training seems to be one of the most important. A figure of 10,000 hours practice seems to be commonly required whether you wish to be world class at running or playing the violin. Then there is self belief, single-mindedness, determination,competition etc etc. The correct facilities do not seem very important at all. Kenyan runners train on poor quality grass tracks, and Brazillian footballers in Rio practice in the back streets of their slums as children.

So my naive idea that sportsmen are 'born talented' doesn't seem to be correct. Yes, you need good eye / hand coordination, but it is the coaching and hours of practice that are much more important. And MarkM's point about a school of thought that you pick the build ( ie genes) and train them up, appears to be common.

Lets be honest.. Rugby league is a relatively low skilled sport compared to alot out there.

if you're big, strong and fast, you can have a fair crack at being a professional rugby player.

There are plenty of SL players plying their trade who's skill set can best be described as 'big, strong and daft'.

It's not like cricket, golf, boxing or football (although the way football is going you could make a similar argument). You cant just pick those sports up at 14/15 and sign professional contracts 2/3 years later.

You do get your Mylers, Gouldings, Longs' coming through now and again. But these players are coming from a strong RL background and have been almost bred to play RL from an early age.

The reality is the majority of your smaller players that might might be the next Briers are off playing other sports they are good at...