This could easily become a "yes we did no we didn't", but I will say one more thing. Having a few mediocre juniors come through isn't the same as "prioritising the future". You have to compare what we've managed in the past decade with other clubs - and literally every single club in the comp can find a few of its own kids to put on the park. Every. single. one. I literally don't know what "prioritising the future" means in this context because it sure as hell isn't chucking in an occasional Esan Marsters or Kyle Lovett.We did (And didn't)
Taylor stopped focus on it around 15-16, Until then we'd heavily invested (And overpaid)
on Juniors to top 30.
You'd be right in saying there's no fruits of it, But there's the likes of the
Mikaeles, Liddles, B Sironens, Lodge, Marshall-King, Browns, Jesse Sue, Santis etc. that never really kicked on...
The Moses, Brooks, C Sironen, Simonas, Nofoaluma etc. that have basically been overpaid since day dot - Not leaving us much room....
On top of a bunch of flashes in the pan that debuted and didn't do much at all...
We did prioritise the future, And have probably been bad at it....
Needs to be considered that the future we prioritised was still signed up with us until the 2017-2018 mark before it started to bleed out.
If you're trying to say that we prioritised the future by putting too much of our cap into juniors it doesn't really stand up to any scrutiny. Of your list, Moses and Sinonen both left to get their first big contracts so clearly weren't "overpaid since day dot", and I'm not sure whether Nofoaluma was overpaid until his current deal - which he signed aged 28 so not exactly done on potential. Obviously the club put far too much faith in Brooks but that's hardly the sign of a strategy. Most of the other decent talent we've lost has been at least in part because we didn't give them a game: Addo-Carr was getting left out for Jordan Rankin, Papenheuysen wasn't close to first grade... and honestly there aren't many others.