So forgive me if I'm not drinking the Koolaid that says we have done a great job of developing our kids. We are playing them now because we were 0-10 and have about 6 senior players injured. If that wasn't the case, we probably wouldn't have even played Blakely this year.
I think you will find that Weller was in the team round 1 and has not left it, Langdon was in the team round 2 after earning a performance, Blakely was supposed to play round 2 but got injured (Ross said this in an interview during the week before that match) It then only took him 1 game after coming back from injury to get into the team. Alex Pearce was in the team at round 2 (delayed by injuries again)
So that is at least 4 youngsters that were in contention by round 2, well and truly before our season was over.
By round 4 we can also add Crozier to the list (still semi-youth as he has not played 50 games) and at this point the season is still not over if we could snag a win.
Then at round 5 when we hit the do or die game (if we lost this we could 100% kiss finals goodbye) we brought in Tucker and Grey. (Could be argued that the season was over by now but we all certainly were not thinking that at the time)
All of these games were not gifted by injury, they were on the back of dropping older players like Suban, Ibbotson, DeBoer, Mzungu etc
It could be argued the season was over at round 5 but again that was not the thinking at the time imo
Hughes and Collins have been fortunate to gain games due to us losing and injuries occuring, I can concede that but the other youngsters earnt their places.