a number of modern pilots are not interested in tailwheel aircraft because they sometimes appear to me to be a little afraid of the perceived difficulty in handling
It's not "afraid", it's "why would I bother to spend scare money and flying time on something that's reputed to be more difficult, and is then going to be smaller and slower and without sufficient gizmos for effortless navigation?"
Anyway, all this silly squabbling about which end the wheel should be -
real aeroplanes
don't have wheels.