There’s been a long standing debate as to whether coaches should utilise olympic lifting with their athletes or other options such as loaded jumps in order to chase adaptations like rate of force development or power. Which, if you’re looking at the exercises for those sole reasons, may have some validity to it. However, I’m a firm believer that olympic lifting are not exercises that solely improve rate of force development and power. 

Olympic lifting has unique traits and hence simply aren’t comparable by other loaded jump variations – here’s why

1. Olympic lifting require you to withstand and yield an external body of mass, an important quality when looking at sports that require a strong ability to act upon opponents like tackling in rugby. No other exercise can mimic the amount of load you have to decelerate and then re-accelerate like in a catch. 
2. So much bang for your buck – when athletes have rigid schedules, only so much energy allotment and also so much attention to get through a gym session, the olympic lifts serve as a great tool to build/maintain a lot of important qualities. Once competent, it’s likely you can lift heavy enough to maintain max strength or power adaptations, in a large ROM while also ticking off things like dangerous space shoulder work in a snatch.
3. We have a stupid amount of variations we can utilise with olympic lifting, meaning not only is it enjoyable to have some sort of novelty in the program constantly flowing but it also encourages you to break through plateaus and develop more & more movement patterns which may help benefit acquisition in other activities

To put It simply, as an athlete you will most likely benefit from challenging yourself to produce powerful movement in new/difficult positions

They aren’t essential by any means, you can still become incredibly athletic without them. But that tends to be the same with any other exercise. Olympic lifting, with enough time investment, is the gift that keeps on giving to not only chase power and rate of force development but also all the unique qualities mentioned above.