Folder collection paths are not working - Hugo + Netlify CMS

I am using Hugo and Netlify CMS for my project. Mostly functional site however my issue is with subfolders and paths.

In my config.yml -

folder: “content/blog”
path: “{{year}}/{{month}}/{{slug}}”
slug: “{{year}}-{{month}}-{{day}}-{{slug}}”

Yet in my ‘blog’ collection folder my test posts are not within subfolders as I had expected.
I’ve have tested different paths and slugs…

Still all my test posts will be for example ‘blog/2023-08-07-test.md’ instead of ‘blog/2023/08/2023-08-07-test.md’

Are the folders so necessary? I think it will be when I upload images and I prefer the sub folders but I don’t know what I am doing wrong yet. I followed this instruction here https://decapcms.org/docs/beta-features/#folder-collections-path

… but it did not produce a subfolder.

This is a screenshot from my repo in the ‘blog’ collection folder -

I would really appreciate some guidance.
My post titles alone are a plea for help lol

Netlify doesn’t own or provide CMS support anymore: Decap CMS | Open-Source Content Management System