I dunno -
I reckon our skill levels have improved significantly in most things apart from kicking. The problem is that they were pretty bad previously. I only really have a peripheral view of this, but from what I could tell, for a a long period there was next to no focus on skills at junior levels. I remember attending a number of different coaching forums and the common trait looked for in terms of individual backline skill was how many players could they trample in school boys footy. The only passing requirement was - can you pass it to the big guy who can trample over people, unless you were the big guy in which case there was very little consideration to teaching them to pass. 5/8s were often primarily ball runners so that there were less passes required to get the ball to them. 1 dimensional centres were fine as their two jobs were either carry heavy or tackle the other teams big runner.
Likewise, game strategy revolves around getting the ball to the two or three big guys and retaining possession for 100 phases.
That may seem like an exaggeration - but from my perspective that seemed pretty close to the truth. It seems very unfair to say, but our golden era was largely based on high retention, power based football (although a lot of the individual players were still quite skilful) but it seems to me that we got caught up with our success and never tried to evolve.
The good news is that there are a whole heap of individuals and groups of ex players across the country now who are quite focused on giving back and addressing this issue - often at their own expense - but there is a mountain to climb and they are really just leaving base camp. I do believe improvement is evident though, but the opposition isn’t standing still.
