I received the following reply from ESP on their Face Book page
"Thank you Michael for your in-depth feedback on NRL Traders 2016. The image selection process takes a number of months to complete and we feel that the images selected for NRL Traders 2016 are the best quality images of that player. We do however take on board your passionate feedback and will ensure in the future the final image selected is in some way different to a previous release providing the image is of the highest quality and standard.
Product quality is of prime importance to ESP/TLA we will always endeavor to selected the best and most suitable image of a player to feature on a trading cards.
Thanks again
The ESP/TLA team