We've been seeing a substandard competition for the last 15 years to be honest.
I think a big part of that began when NRL allowed NRL clubs to decommission their official feeder clubs. It was purely a cost cutting measure. They televised the NYC instead and assumed that players would be able to skip the toughening up in reserve grade. I think every club dropped their feeder and most housed their reserves with clubs like Mounties and Newtown. It pushed a lot of players out that could be late bloomers.
But I miss things like contested scrums. Many people don't even know what you are talking about if you discussed the loose head and feed. Back when these were things a scrum could be fucking exciting. Winning a scrum against the feed could net you a quick try or at least posession when you were in trouble. Now they're virtually a chance to get a bit of a break, I can't recall the last time I saw a scrum go against the feed.
I also think we rely on too many interchanges now. With less interchanges, you could load up on big guys to dominate early, but it would usually mean that late in the game, little guys could run rings around them. So it really let players in every size range have their advantages.
Grey areas in rules. There's many but I'll just talk about one. The Sheppard play is up to refs discretion now and as a result there's generally a fuckload of grey area where players intentionally run into decoys if they can't tackle someone. And decisions could go either way. I find it hard to tolerate that you just can't guess which way anything will go anymore. Once upon a time this wasn't needed. You just couldn't run behind a team mate when you had the ball. So this grey area has led to a trend of milking and diving.
I know this last one actually has some sense behind it. But I really miss shoulder charges. Makes the game feel less like a gladiator sport than it used to. And suspension for throwing a punch makes the game feel a bit soft.
But between rule changes, the seemingly uninforced salary cap (everyone ever caught cheating the cap has been due to a tip off or somebody saying the wrong thing), referees being shit and noticeably biased. I could go on. But yeah I used to love that any team could beat any other once upon a time in fair contests. So I understand your point completely.