Brazil learns to love a whole new ball game

The boy could be no more than five years old.

Wearing a vastly outsized fluorescent bib that swamps him, giving him the appearance of an altar boy in a flowing cassock, he has in his hands a rugby ball.

And it is clear from his expression that he has never seen anything like it.

His first instinct is to bounce the strangely shaped object at his feet.

When it bucks and jumps, spinning away across the dusty ground, he chases after it, giggling.

Within 20 minutes, he is joining in a game of touch rugby, flinging the ball around and catching it with aplomb, a broad grin playing across h…