Im not so sure, we definitely were on the physical side but not as much as say a scotland, we had players like zelic, okon, kewell, viduka, lazaridis, bresc, grella. Tom Byer who undertook japans technical revolution pointed to the technical superiority of Australian players back then compared to japan and today
But that aside, if we had a league academies from year 1, going to u6 rather than u13, if we had a 26 round nyl every year from 2005, plus reserve teams in the state leagues and colt teams in the nyl, if we had the ais continue, is it plausible to you that there would have been 0 difference?