You cut your teeth in third grade or under-23s, waiting for the opportunity to play reserve-grade football. The reserve-grade competition was unbelievably strong. You might play there for a few years before your chance in first grade came along. Then when you became a first-grade player, you always knew you had to perform because there was a player in the grade below you pushing hard to get your position. These days our NRL players don't have that performance pressure. Your NRL team is all but selected in October by virtue of your salary cap. I see a lot of players currently playing in the NRL and under-performing, especially at this time of year in teams out of the finals race. These blokes should be playing reserve grade on form but the stupid second-tier salary cap and in many cases the lack of depth in talent at clubs means that these players are saved the pressure of being replaced when their form is not up to scratch. The people who devised current-day salary cap models and competition structures know nothing about player or club development. But that's a story for another day. As time went by and we introduced new teams from interstate and even the Warriors from overseas into the major competition, it was considered by many clubs to be too costly in terms of time and travel for each club to accommodate three senior teams.

The Queensland Rugby League was also campaigning strongly against the effect these lower grades were having on their domestic competitions and the state-based Queensland Cup they were developing. Even today it is the QRL which is lobbying for the National Youth Competition (NYC) to be scrapped and that the under-20s competition be returned as curtain raisers to their statewide competition. The introduction of the NYC eventually saw many NRL clubs then remove their former reserve-grade side and moved players who were too old for under-20s to feeder teams into what we now call the NSW Cup. For instance, in today's NSW Cup, the Roosters send their players to the Wyong Roos, the Raiders send their players to the Sydney-based Mounties club, Sharks to Newtown, Dragons to the Illawarra Cutters, the Eels to Wentworthville Magpies, and the Rabbitohs send players to the North Sydney Bears. Yes that's correct. The Souths players play for the old North Sydney Bears. Go figure eh? How many rugby league fans actually know this all goes on? When the NYC was first proposed, it was never meant to replace the old reserve-grade competition but for a good while now that's exactly what has happened. And I believe that attitude has been detrimental to our game.

Before I arrived back at Penrith in 2011, the Panthers sent their excess players to the Windsor Wolves to play in the NSW Cup competition. To be honest, the Panthers treated this competition very shabbily and again I believed that attitude was detrimental to the club's development. Prior to 2011, the last locally developed player to make it to the NRL team was Lachlan Coote in 2008. Today we maintain our relationship with this tremendous junior league club by providing them with players for their Ron Massey Cup and Sydney Shield teams. We also have a relationship with another of our junior league teams in the Blacktown Workers club who play in these competitions. We are delighted that another of our junior clubs, the powerful St Marys club, will also join these better competitions. These junior clubs and these better open-age competitions are vital components in the player development pathways we have established at Panthers over the past three years. We send many of our junior representative kids out to play in these competitions to play against men. There are two reasons: firstly it's good for their development and confidence. Secondly, because these competitions have better referees and they are video taped for judiciary purposes, unlike local A-grade competitions. We have found these competitions to be highly valuable in the development of players. Quite often we believe it's best for our teenagers to be playing against men rather than playing in the under-20s.

Penrith players like Matt Moylan, Regan Campbell-Gillard and George Jennings came through this system. We also believe that all our young players should have to play at least 12-15 games in the NSW Cup competition before we debut them in the NRL competition. We believe this is a more natural progression for them and we push our under-20s players into the NSW Cup team as often as possible to get them that experience. We had to educate people that the next step up from the NYC was not the NRL, but in fact the NSW Cup. In 2014 we reinstated our own Panthers team in the NSW Cup and along with the Bulldogs, Manly, Wests Tigers, Knights and Warriors, we are the only NRL clubs who now carry three senior teams in the NRL, NSW Cup and NYC competitions. Teams like the Melbourne Storm, Broncos, Titans and Cowboys send their players to various clubs in the Queensland Cup competition. Off you go lads; see you next week ... maybe. Penrith won last year's NSW Cup, with many of the young players who won the NYC the previous year in 2013. This year our NSW Cup team shares the lead in this competition despite the fact our club has experienced one of the worst injury tolls I can ever remember. We also currently lead the NYC.

We take these competitions very seriously, not so much on whether we win or lose games, but rather in the important role we believe they play in the development of potential NRL talent. I try to get to as many of these games as I can despite the fact our NSW Cup team often plays on different days and different venues to our NRL and NYC teams. When our NRL team plays at home and the draw allows, we like to play all our three grades together on NRL game day. If the broadcasters allow, we even play the games in what I believe to be the correct order of NYC, then NSW Cup as the curtain-raiser to the NRL match. The draw doesn't permit this very often, but the day just feels better when it's conducted in this order. At Panthers, if you want to play NRL, you have to prove yourself in reserve grade. When I arrived at Panthers four years ago, no one wanted to play in the NSW Cup. NRL players saw it as a huge drop in prestige to be playing in another team's colours on some dimly lit suburban ground out of sight and out of mind. Even NYC players considered it a backward step because the NYC was being played on pay TV, on the big ground before the NRL match. In 2012 we established a program called Project 2015. The aim was to establish best-practice player-development systems in the talent identification, recruitment and development of junior footballers. To know if we were on the right track, we set ourselves the goal of producing three NRL players from our junior development systems by season 2015. This was our plan.

In 2014 we had Bryce Cartwright, Isaah Yeo, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak and Keiran Mosely debut in the NRL. This year Regan Campbell-Gillard, Waqa Blake, George and Robert Jennings have now made the grade. Already in our system I can see three more NRL debuts in 2016 and maybe even a further four or five in season 2016. Our plans are really that far ahead and the future looks bright. Full credit goes to our recruitment managers Jim Jones and Mark Hughes, along with our brilliant club coaching staff. The aim is for these development programs and systems to build this Panthers club over the next decade and the model should hopefully sustain this club for many decades to come. We know it's working and we will persevere. This is an expensive exercise and we will produce many NRL players over the next decade, not only for Panthers, but inevitably other NRL clubs as well. Are we compensated financially for this by the NRL? No we are not. We don't even get a thank you. In fact, in many ways they actively work against us. Not just us mind you, but all NSW-based development clubs.

Again, more on this another time. The basis of all this though has been re-establishing the importance of the reserve-grade side and open-aged completions in the development model. Which brings me back to where this column started. I went to watch our NSW Cup team play last week. It was a stand-alone game, on a Saturday afternoon in Campbelltown, in front of about 150 spectators, no atmosphere, no fanfare, no excitement. There were a number of quality NRL-standard and emerging NRL players on display. Like most NSW Cup games I watch, it was keenly contested with quality football on display. I love these games. Unfortunately, no one was there to see it.

It's a credit to these players that they create their own motivation and enthusiasm. They build their own atmosphere out there in the middle. They do so because they have pride in their performance and because they have dreams of playing in the NRL. Yet the game treats this competition and these players like third-rate (not second-rate) citizens. It's depressing. I feel so sorry for these players. I feel even more sorry for those people now working in rugby league administration who think this situation is OK. Mind you, the vast majority of them wouldn't even know what I'm talking about. I could go on. But it falls on deaf ears. Many of our junior league officials and NRL club recruitment and development officers between them have decades upon decades of experience in rugby league. They are rarely, if ever interviewed or consulted on issues of game, competition or player development. I am feeling their growing frustration. Something has to give.