Fullback Matt Moylan and winger Josh Mansour will give Panther fans something extra to cheer for when the lights go on for this marquee event in our rugby league calendar. It's very exciting for our club to have these two popular young players representing the Blues on this massive occasion.

I'd like to talk a bit about their careers so far, because there are a couple of strong messages in their stories. There is inspiration for all youngsters who dream of playing in the NRL. There is also a lesson for the NRL administration itself, particularly at this time because officials are considering significant change to the development pathways that exist in our game today.

Firstly, Matt Moylan. When I arrived back at the Panthers in May of 2011, the NYC team was performing poorly and had done so since this national under-20s competition had first begun several years prior.

I sat down with our recruitment manager Jim Jones pretty much every day assessing the credentials of these young players and their potential to one day play NRL football.

Matt had been in and out of the under-20s team since 2009. Over the course of the three seasons he had played 43 games in this grade. Prior to his entry into the NYC age group Matt had not been a standout performer through junior rep football. He was pretty much a bench player in the under 18s SG ball team.

He had played most of his football at five-eighth. He tended to a run across field a lot. He wasn't overly big and not particularly strong. He was a target for opposition ball runners and he had a fair bit of trouble tackling the big blokes when defending in the front line.

I have to say that at the end of the 2011 season, this young man wasn't screaming out at us that he could be an NRL footballer.

Our man Jones is the best in the business. He has a great eye for talent. He reads personality and character extremely well. He is also an extremely patient man and continually reminds us that young players develop at different rates and in very different ways.

He kept coming back to the fact that Matt had been very successful in touch and tag football. He said: "He's got good skills, a bit of speed, but just needs further development. We need to keep him in the system for another couple of years."

In 2012 Matt would be too old for under 20s, but we decided to encourage him with a small contract ($30,000 from memory) to play NSW Cup for a couple of years, just to see if we could develop him a little further. To be honest, he didn't handle the rise to NSW Cup level all that easily. He played a little bit of five-eighth and fullback, but looked to be struggling with the challenge of playing against grown men in open-age competition.

As the season wore on though, the confidence started to grow. He got his head around dealing with the collisions. He settled into the position of fullback and started to read the play a lot better. Taking him out of the front-line defence allowed him to sit at the back and watch how the game unfolds in attack and defence. He really started to come on.

As luck would have it, just as he began to show some real promise, his poor physical development up to this point in time eventually told against him and he dislocated a shoulder, requiring reconstructive surgery.

I've seen a lot of kids drop out of the system at this point. Matt persevered. There was a quiet determination about this young man and he showed no signs of giving up.

As soon as his surgery was complete Matt was back in the gym working on his body.

He returned the following year in NSW Cup competition and started to show some pleasing form.

Come round seven and the Panthers are low on troops following a string of injuries. Head coach Ivan Cleary walks into the selection meeting shaking his head, bemoaning the fact he hasn't got a fullback for that weekend's game. Jones says: "Give the kid a shot, he'll handle it."

On April 29, 2013, Matt Moylan, a Penrith local junior who played for St Clair Comets in St Patrick's Blacktown, made his first-grade debut at fullback for the Panthers against Parramatta. The Panthers won that game and Moylan was man of the match.

In 2014 Matt was spearheading the Panthers in their fairytale run towards a final-four finish in the NRL competition. Just 18 months after his first-grade debut he was rewarded with a spot in the Australian Four Nations squad at the end of that season. On June 1, 2016, after 57 NRL games for the Panthers, Matt Moylan will run onto ANZ Stadium as the NSW fullback.

Josh Mansour is a similar story. He played junior football for St John's Eagles and Kings Grove Colts. He played just 48 games in the under-20s NYC for South Sydney between 2009 and 2010. South Sydney won the NYC in his second year.

At this time Josh was not seen as a future NRL player for the Rabbitohs. He was sent to the feeder club to play NSW Cup with the North Sydney Bears. He spent the entire 2011 season playing reserve grade in various positions. We received a call from Brad Fittler who was good friends with one of the trainers of this North Sydney team. He gave Josh a huge wrap, not so much for his talent, but more his character and work ethic.

We watched him play a few games. He had a constitution for hard work, and plenty of it. We were looking for enthusiastic young players who wanted to make something of themselves. Josh looked to be exactly that kind of player. We offered him a small encouragement contract ($40,000 from memory), but to be honest the money meant nothing to Josh, he simply wanted an opportunity to prove himself.

From the first day he turned up at Panthers for off-season training, he was here to play. The way he trains and looks after himself is an example for all young players who want to succeed in this game.

He started off in our reserve grade team. In round nine of the 2012 season he was selected on the wing in the NRL side to play for the Panthers against Melbourne Storm. The Storm dusted us up that night, beating us pretty convincingly. However, there was one shining light in this game. It was young Josh. He wasn't brilliant by any stretch, but he showed himself to be a player that other players love to have in their team. Josh has now played 73 NRL matches for the Panthers and we are so excited he is getting this opportunity on Wednesday night with the Blues.

These two guys are an inspiration to all young players, especially those who have been told at some stage they weren't big enough, strong enough or even good enough to play NRL football.

They have persevered, worked hard and thoroughly deserve all the success that now comes their way.

The moral of this story for the NRL, of course, is that not every NRL player today was a rising star at 17 or 18 years of age. Not every player who comes through the NYC system flags himself as an NRL player of the future.

I can still remember our recruitment manager at Sydney Roosters in 2002, the late great Arthur Beetson, giving us a scouting report on a very young Johnathan Thurston. Arthur recommended that we should not look to sign young Thurston because he was "Too small, can't tackle." In fairness to big Artie, most talent scouts of the day were saying exactly the same thing. The rest, as they say, is history.

There is a huge difference between talent scouting and player development.

You don't need to be a genius to see elite talent. Mind you, not all talented players in their teenage years end up being NRL footballers. It takes a lot more than just talent to make it in this game. But for players such as Matt Moylan, Josh Mansour, Johnathan Thurston and many others just like them, it took someone, somewhere, with an eye for what was possible and enough belief in them to keep them in the system, to develop these kids through to NRL level and even beyond.

Not all NRL players are stars at 18. Not all NRL players are stars at even 20 years of age. But without the pathways program that exists through junior rep football, into the under-20s National Youth Competition, and from there into open age competition at the second-tier level, many past, current and future NRL players would be lost to rugby league.

I will write more about this in the coming weeks because it is so important to our game. What I will say at this point though is that the current proposals being put forward suggesting significant changes to our player development pathways, rookie contracts and the extraordinary decision to get rid of the National Youth Competition are, to my mind, dangerous and potentially extremely damaging to the long-term future of our game.

Under the systems being proposed now, Moylan, Mansour and even the game's greatest ever player, Thurston, may have well fallen through the cracks.

The people who have the experience, knowledge and a history of developing young footballers should be the ones sitting on the committees deciding the future development pathways for our game. Not people who are simply looking at the bottom line from a cost-saving perspective. The NRL is on the wrong track here.

Anyway, that's enough of the soapbox for one day. More on this another time. For now, though, everyone at Panthers wishes Matt and Josh the very best of luck for their Origin debuts on Wednesday night. Their selections are thoroughly deserved and we know they will do themselves and their families proud.

Good luck boys.

Phil Gould is the executive general manager of football, Penrith Panthers