The old A Teams were never full of players who were just outside the first 13 either. They were made up of Colts players, the odd triallist, players returning from injury and a core of older players who were clearly not up to first team but could fill a gap if required. IMO it filled a useful gap for older Colts players to get practice against senior pros. There were always players who bypassed it and went straight from Colts to first team, but that route is getting harder.
My issue with dropping reserve grade was that it wasn't replaced with an organised pathway to the first team. The gap between junior and first grade is probably bigger than ever, and we need to make sure there's a bridge for Academy players. We also need to be able to not just bin anyone who isn't quite first team ready at 18/19 (in Australia very few teenagers debut, most are 20/21).
I'd have had no problem with Dual Reg and loans if it was systematic, which I don't think it really can be without franchising. Instead when you look across the league its been chaos as afar as I can tell.
