Last season on Team 33, ex-Arsenal, Yeovil and Reading midfielder Ben Smith gave us quite an insight into the stark differences between playing in the higher echelons of modern football and playing much further down the pyramid.
The Journeyman author was released by the Gunners in his teens and pointing out that technique was not what concerned him, told us: "Athletically I knew I was challenged. I'm just a really average 5 foot 8, 5 foot 9 average build. And while that's fine if you play in the lower leagues, whenever I've played at a high standard or teams from a higher standard, you stand in the tunnel against a Championship team or Premier League team, everyone is 6 foot. Everyone. At least 6 foot. They're supreme athletes, ripped, can run 100 metres in 11 and a half or 12 seconds."
Of course, that was more emphasis as anything else as he added later, citing the David Silvas of this world.
But the physical aspect is one of the challenges Premier League top scorer and in-form Leicester goal machine Jamie Vardy would have had to overcome on his route from non-league, having been released by Sheffield Wednesday in his teens.
On this week's show we picked out half a dozen players who had to take the long route to the top.
We chart the stories of Ian Wright, Dean Windass, Jason McAteer and Stuart Pearce on the podcast:
But how were some of these players spotted eventually?
Former England, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle United defender Stuart 'Pscyho' Pearce was my choice and looking back at his time with Wealdstone, he once made an interesting point about his early development.
In a One-on-One Q&A with FourFourTwo magazine, the 53-year-old who did spend some of his early teens at QPR, spoke about being deemed too small, while also being played at centre-half initially at Wealdstone rather than the left-back position he made his own in a memorable career.
It wasn't until 1983 that a professional team finally made a concrete move for him, by which time he was already 21 and that club was Coventry City, whose manager Bobby Gould was impressed by what he saw as he sat pitchside during a Wealdstone fixture when he was on the lookout for a competent left-back.
As he told the Daily Mail, the impact was as much physical as it was an impression on the senses: "The game was seven minutes old when Pearce tackled Yeovil’s right winger so hard he landed in my wife’s lap. I can still hear his groan as he landed.
"Next day we offered £25,000 and I spoke to Stuart at his parents’ house at Wembley. He was a man possessed, desperate to make up for lost time."
That battle to prove oneself and make up for lost time is a key factor and something ex-Arsenal great Ian Wright definitely exhibited before he was spotted by playing for Greenwich Borough.
In a video for Barcalys Football TV, he opens up about the lack of fall-back option, saying: "I was a useless labourer, I was a useless bricklayer, I was a useless plasterer".
In the book, The Wright Stuff, he is also quoted at saying, "I draw my strength and desire from the fact I came into the game late. You want to show people, prove that you are good enough", adding that "All the people who rejected me when I was younger must look at it and know they were wrong."
Wright certainly did show people, as his goalscoring exploits at Crystal Palace and Arsenal showed during the 1990s.
Speaking of rejection, that seems to be something which appears to unite many of those who made the push from the lower reaches to the summit.
QPR striker Charlie Austin was let go by Reading in his mid-teens, Vardy was also released by Sheffield Wednesday at 16, while Pearce (QPR) and Dean Windass (Hull before returning twice to make more than significant impacts) all experienced that unforgiving side of the game.
And arguably the most high-profile player who slipped through the hands of a club as a teenager must be Manchester United and England centre-back Chris Smalling, who was let go by Millwall at 16, before joining non-league Maidstone and rising through the ranks, which should provide hope as Austin once said of himself and Vardy when both were called up by the English national team:
"I believe people below us are looking at me and Jamie and see that it can be done."
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