Fantastic piece, offering some great stories, perspectives and some exciting and sobering history.
The genetic stuff is a bit of malarky though. We need to be a bit careful in trying to hardwire positive attributes to particular groups as it gives a bit of a licence to those seeking to hardwire negative attributes.
Firstly, there is about 0.1% difference between humans genetic makeup. So that very likely makes the genetic theory for a whole group of people a distant possibility. Cultural or community differences are far more likely to explain the over-representation (do we see that over representation across all sports? Or are we saying there’s a genetic difference to playing Aussie Rules?).
Secondly when processing vision neurologically, more information travels from the brain to the eyes than the eyes to the brain. Essentially what we see is in the eye of the beholder, so we’ll see what matches up with what we believe or our story of the situation. This goes for both fans and for those within the industry, like recruiters (i.e. more of a positive bias towards recruiting touch and highly skilled players and less so towards defensive beasts and grunt workers). Or we attribute breathtaking play to some innate “magic”, rather than to hours of practice. It’s not the whole story but probably plays a part.
