In defence of the Paseka decision, he signed for Manly in March 2017. He did not play more than 13 games for each of the first two seasons and only started 2 matches in that same time, the other 24 matches off the bench.
At that particular time our prop rotation was Origin-level Aaron Woods, Ava S, Jesse Sue, Tim Grant, Lawnmower boy, JJ Felise and The Huth. We had also just signed Twal from Parramatta, who played immediately and managed 9 games in total 2017.
I can understand therefore both the desire for the club to want Paseka to stay and bide his time, and also why the player didn't want that. I recall Paseka being huge but struggling with his minutes and the defensive requirements of the game.
I genuinely don't believe Paseka became a legitimate FG prospect until 2021 when he finally began starting matches and played 21 games that season. I still don't think he's a particularly great prop. Guy has never played rep football of any kind, though he would be eligible for both Tonga and NZ.
So if a club wants to buy one of our juniors and invest 4-5 years in their development to get them to consistent FG standard, in that case I say "good luck to them" because it's a very significant investment of both time and money. It's not necessarily the time and/or money we could have or needed to have spent.
It clearly did not help that we were in the process of sacking JT and the further player losses in 2017 would hurt far more than Paseka.
Now if he turned out to be Payne Haas after 1 or 2 seasons then fair enough, but Paseka is not even remotely in that echelon. He doesn't have much competition at Manly, who have always known their prop stocks were low given they headhunted Lawnmower Boy from us, signed both Nathan Brown and Matt Lodge this year from the wilderness, and continue to field Tof Sipley week on week (who is an average player at best).
Nah I'm not going wring hands about Paseka. Your other points are valid but this player isn't a posterchild for our inadequacies in player development.