It's like asking if video games are better or worse now than ever.
They've changed over time, with the demands of the consumer and the available funds and technologies.
People in the 70s thought Space Invaders was groovy, and people in the 80s thought Super Mario Bros was rad, and people in the 90s thought Street Fighter II was the bomb, and people last decade thought GTA III was epic... To a certain extent, you can get nostalgic about games from the past, but you couldn't get someone paying $100 for Space Invaders these days.
Footy's much the same - You might be nostalgic about the way that football used to be, and you might even think that relative to the time, it was more entertaining, but old-style football wouldn't wow modern audiences enough to get them to pay the modern prices, and old teams certainly wouldn't stand up against modern teams.
Footy is entertaining to us as a culture in much the same way that it's always been, but it seems to be reaching a wider audience than in the past, which might suggest that relative to our time, it's better than ever.