I feel sorry for this crew. The 73-8 is way too long; the 200 was the original length, which was stretched to the 3, then the 4 and now the 8 and 900s. OK, the taller gear of the NG helps a little, but these aircraft have been stretched way beyond reasonable limits. Fitting a tail skid/indicator is an indication that you have an aircraft that is likely to bump its tail at some point. In other words, it's a badly designed aircraft. I'd hate to fly the 900.
Wind shear can be an absolute pig. I've never been to Funchal, but there are a few places dotted around the south of Europe where big rocks cause bad shear when the wind is blowing from that direction. It's not unknown for their ATC to tell porkies when the wind is beyond limits just to keep things moving. I had that when landing on an island "in the south east corner of the EU" with a limit of 13kts with SE winds. 45kts all the way down the approach and over 30 in the flare, but there was a steady stream of arrivals... Sometimes ATC are your friend, and sometimes not. I hope that wasn't the case here. Still, even when inside of prescribed limits, you can get a combination of sink rate from shear and pitch rate from turbulence that will bang the tail regardless of how good the pilot is.