Because McReight, Willson and McDermott all have been in fairly imperious form -- McReight was more than double the next player in pilfers; Willson has been arguably our best ball-running option and undoubtedly our best option in the squad; and McDermott has been pretty unarguably the best halfback across the whole comp perhaps other players have had better patches of form or better at specific aspects of there game, but all in all McDermott is probably the best 9 in the comp.
Simone was far from our best 12 (To'omua, O'Connor and Hodge would all likely be ahead of him) - don't get me wrong he was good but he wasn't exceptional. No one watch the SRAU and said after games 'wow that Simone kid has gotta be in the Wallabies' McDermott did that after most his games. Being overly fair Simone is probably around the same level as Stewart and nether of them really set the world on fire. You even look at someone like Petaia not a lot of game time but in his limited involvement he's had a disproportionate impact on the games. Simone is a 'fine' player but he's just a fine player.
As for Lolesio, he played well for . 2 games then a grand final. Yes playing well in a finals counts for something, but so does playing consistently well week in week out, a player needs a body of work and Lolesio has none, had he played all of SRAU at that level then maybe you could justify picking him but he only played 2 games and a grand final. It's not SUPER hard to have one or two good games, it's quite possible Lolesio has a massive hole in his game that has yet to be exposed because he's just not played at that level. Beyond that what we saw from Lolesio IMO at least has him probably slightly below O'Connor but slightly above Harrison. But ultimately, we've not seen enough to pick him at 10 game one in New Zealand.
I'm all for getting our young kids some burn (you can look at my previous comments over the years I VERY much am), but I'm also for not throwing them to the wolves. Guys like McReight and Willson IMO have the tools to perform at test level. McDermott has been the form 9 of the comp week in week out. While Simone has been ho-hum and Lolesio just didn't play enough. I would love to see Lolesio maybe come off the bench game 1 or 2 and probably given the starting job against South Africa but he's not 'taken' the starting job he's not said 'this is mine' granted because he's not had the opportunity -- he's done well with what opportunity he has had but ultimately he's not done enough. Plus we'll also have to have a look at Harrison too.
Even Daugunu a player nether of us brought up, he was/is the top winger of the comp all year, Wright was fairly close in attack but was largely absent in defense and some of the things Daugunu did were exceptional but I could see either starting but IMO Daugunu really took that jersey.
