It’s the way for ACT to be competitive. Has been all NSW for the last few years and it seems NSW is carrying a much larger academy now. Coincidence?
It’s not a development region now. It’s a recruitment side.
We’re just still blinded by when it was built on locals and some astute pickups.
It's the under 18s as much as anything limiting QLD right now, particularly in the front row - Uys, Slater and Hamala are all very good props and at least 2 of them would probably playing here. This is also a bit of fallow year for props with such a focus on those guys coming through (and King and Bloomfield having just come through). Plenty of talent in the other reps too - Conway, Mackay and Ross would probably all make a big impact here.
It's not necesserily a bad thing though, it means we do get more game time into a wider group of players, particularly for QLD and NSW, but it does mean the absolute stars are only ever going to be available for one year of this comp (if that). Then the focus on locking those stars in longterm means that the guys a year older but behind them in potential are a bit more vulnerable to being picked up by ACT and WA.
I'd guess one of the reasons NSW can afford to run a larger academy at the moment is that they've had a heap of turnover the last few years and the super side still isn't particularly settled. It ends up meaning there are a lot more theoretically open slots for players coming through.
The other elephant in the room is the French academies that seem to have gone hard at our young tight 5 players in QLD recently, though I'm not sure how many of them would have been eligble this year.