The official tagline for the league is literally "Where All Whites are made.". Its a development league, what's the problem with using it for development?
I'm not particularly happy with this being a development league. We shouldn't be relying on the Phoenix and the Phoenix only to satisfy all our footballing development requirements, because if they go - which we're still uncomfortably close to - then we're stuck with a amateur "development league" as the best competition in the country with no plans to make it more competitive or grow it. We don't even have a single game reported on the news unless it's a final ffs.
A Phoenix reserves team is fine by me, but I'm not sure if I want it to be a youth team, save that for the NYL. A B team I would be very happy with - give guys like Way, Lowry, even Burns, Fox, Burges and other subs a chance to impress the coaching team, and make the league more competitive in the process. Very much agree with liberty_nz and Reg.