Not sure this is something to be 'sad' about. Going to the open market to recruit Direct entry pilots is the first sign that the wannabe-p2f well is drying up. It is utterly logical that the first foray into the market would look for typed people first - even BA did that this time round. Then once they guage the numbers they will probably spread the net wider.
All of this is good news - because it doesn't matter who is recruiting what from where - it creates churn in the system and jobs everywhere.