Both points you make are very valid. Especially around game play. I don't mind either renaming players etc. the Daniel carter on rwc2011 looked Asian so my flat mate named him Asian Carter. (Not to be racist). But it was all good to change everyone's name. Not a issue. It made the game work... to a point.

Injuries made 06 and 08 work for me. I loved that you could manage your team around and put in players with low moral or second string players to cover a certain area. Awesome. I loved when I had a lot of injuries. Plus a slider means

1) people can have it high or low or how ever it suits then

2) it makes it realistic, you should be having injuries most games big or small.

3) people who don't like many injuries can have it low or turn it off

I always had it on full.

When it comes to player development I think rugby challenge 2006 had a good system. Just talking about the player development here. But you could select who you wanted to develop and how much to spend on them via coaches in certain areas. Better coaches meant better player development results but costed more money. Which meant you had to manage your funds better, as well as transfers at the end of the year as well. When a player was injured they carried on playing (if they could) and then you could select what physio to use to make them get better faster, if it was a minor injury you could "risk" playing them, they carried the minor injury but could get a major one from playing as well. Was a lot more management involved. Also in player development times you could simulate the players development, or actually do the mini game yourself. Epic! Not the best gameplay but still great. I think even in practice leading up to a big game players could be injured as well.

Even if there is no player development in career mode, at least you should be able to change player stats out of your career mode and they transfer over to your current game. I use to use woosah editor for 08 and I would manually change player stats based on how many tries they had scored or points etc. 1 try = 1 development point. So after a few seasons of world league I was facing players who had better kicking power, strength, faster acceleration, overall sprint speed etc. originally Tana Umaga had speed of 75. After a few seasons he was up to 90 from scoring 15 tries over several seasons. He was that much harder to face as he has stronger and faster etc.

so my point being a manual editor of some kind would be great as well. If I change player stats all it needs to do is copy over to the current competition or career mode I am doing.