the 400d is plastic although the plastic does feel like quite a nice high grade plastic. Ideally for launching into the Canon range I would say you would want to go for the 30D+ as you get the larger easier to hold metal camera body. The 400d does have the focus system out of the 30D which works very quickly with USM lenses.
I would agree with going down to a local Jessops and try out the cameras and find which fit your hands the best, which feels most logical in their button placement to you. Personally im extremely happy with my 20D I find it fits my hands perfectly, however I do find my girlfriends 350D to be quite fiddly in my reasonably large hands.
For indoors stuff you basically want as fast a lens as possible, f2.8 is deffinately preferable but I use f4 and I still get away with using iso800-1600 and getting hand holdable shutter speeds. I have taken the occasional shot with my 50 f1.8 and its great for freezing the action with the ultra fast aperture but focal length wise it is hard to get close enough to the action. I have shot indoors with a 300 f5.6 before and found it ok but struggling to get below iso1600.
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