My understanding was the eastern suburbs league merged with the south Sydney league a few years ago due to dwindling numbers, at least in most age groups. There may still be a few age groups that survived with a 4 team competition or something(?).
Sure, develop players from anywhere sometimes. But what the roosters do is not developing them. All 3 of these players are 1 year away from first grade and talked about being stars well before the roosters came in. That's not developing them, that's simply waiting and cherry picking desput3 1910s defences of it. If Broncos did the same thing with QLD cup players he would undoubtedly say they were developed by qld cup sides.
There were plans for the Sydney Roosters and South Sydney Junior comps to merge to have their junior teams compete against one another but that fell through years ago. Souths and Sydney have been embroiled in a turf war in decades which makes the discussion surrounding junior clubs murky. Clubs that were traditionally affiliated with the Roosters have switched back and forth between the clubs and the zoning has changed throughout the years. They've constantly been poaching players from one another, with Angus Crichton being a good example. Angus was actually brought up through the Roosters system, but then Souths swooped in before the Roosters swooped back.
Suaalii is just another player caught up in that turf war. However, since he was originally an NRL squad player for Souths, I agree that he wasn't developed by the Roosters.
I'm going to have to disagree with Walker. While he was on a Broncos scholarship I don't think the Broncos developed him. The Broncos cast a wide net and while they'll support players and run coaching seminars, it's still largely up to the QRL affiliate to do the hands on. The actual NRL development doesn't take place until they're eligible. This was different when the 20s were still around and before then the Clydesdales but that's how things have operated in the past few years.
Sam didn't start his NRL development until he was signed by the Roosters who took a chance on him after his impressive form for the Jets in the MM Cup.
I do think the conversation around QRL development gets muddled at times. The Queensland clubs operate differently from the Sydney clubs which is why Gus has been promoting national reserve grade because he views the Queensland model as inferior. The major difference is that the pathways in Sydney are streamlined, the best players from that district go through the grades from U/13s on under one banner. With the Queensland teams, all the players are separated into their Queensland affiliate teams and the clubs just take the best prospects and allow the rest to sort themselves out via their respective QRL districts with some oversight from the club.
Where I think it gets muddled is when you get a player like Jordan Riki who was signed by the Broncos via Christchurch and sent to Norths. Brisbane didn't sign him because of Norths, he wasn't a QCup product but he did spend some time there honing his craft.
On the flipside, somebody like Billy Slater is a product of the Queensland Cup since he took an opportunity at Norths and earned an NRL contract.
The reason why I went down that tangent is because 1910 has a point, but it gets muddled in the different development structures in NSW/Qld or the conversation based around the significance of QCup etc.
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