Having great athleticism will always be an advantage, all else equal, so it's no surprise that when it comes to international recruits that the focus tends to be on athletic qualities. By virtue of not growing up with the game, we cannot judge them on their football prowess. The Irish boys tend to be judged more on talent since the Gaelic game has some crossover in skills.
This sentiment always amuses me since it is quite obvious that today's players are more skilled than previous generations. Ball movement is both faster and more accurate than it was in the 1980s or 1990s and light-years beyond the skill level before that.
Based on what? Goal kicking is no better and if not worse than previous eras so why do you think the skills are better? Ball movement is clearly faster but it certainly is not more accurate. A great deal of players couldn’t hit a barn door from 30 meters away by foot.
Maybe you are confused as today’s game is half uncontested that you think these kicks to players standing on their own are highly skilled.
It is mathematically impossible for 90% of today’s kids to better kicks than the kids from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
Those kids in those eras did nothing but kick the footy, before school, during school, after school, footy training and pretty much any spare minute they had they kicked a footy. On average they would kick a footy 50 times or more a day and that is being very conservative. Now go today’s kids who have far more things to do in their life and you will see how much less they are handling a footy. It is simple numbers.
You go and hit 300 golf balls a day and I hit 50 per day the odds are that you will be a much better golfer than me.
There will always be exceptions but still very few of those exceptions make it to the AFL.
I have coached for a long time and a high level down to under 16’s and it is laughable how poorly skilled the players are.
I got no problem with you thinking different as that is your opinion. I know what I see and I spend half of the time watching AFL games laughing how players miss such easy targets by hand and foot and get paid a great deal of money to do so.