Wouldn't Farah, Gibbs, Fulton, Fifita etc be considered as successfully developed (NRL standard) players? I'm sure there's a few others I can't quite think of.It's the only way to build success in this competition.
Bring your own kids though, and recruit the best teenagers to accompany them, and turn them into first graders.
By all means we'll have to purchase ready made FGers as well, but unless we can create our own footballers we're going nowhere.
Build the foundations from within, and then use that to cherry pick the more elite talent.
But it looked like it was the ability to place a blend/balance of players around them that enhanced it - workhorse types and some X factor.
Woods, Tedesco and Farah made origin so it wouldn't seem we were a complete failure with developing players. It shows we helped some players reach their potential.
Believe it was our inadequacy with our succession planning that let us down, in particular the ineffective roster management.