COACH ENDS POWER REIGN

FATHER-SON coaches Darren and Joel Bennett have recommitted to another season at Corio, the club announcing yesterday the pair had put pen to paper for 2021.

This year would have been the duo’s first in charge before the season was abandoned earlier this month.

Darren had his first season in charge last year and was joined by ex-Werribee player Joel for the 2020 campaign.

The club, which has been winless in the past two years, said in a social media post that pre-season training numbers had reached a 10-year high.

Darren said it was a straightforward decision to stay.

“We’ve put in a fair bit of work,” he said. “There was no walking away now.”

Darren said stability in coaching and administration since his arrival at the end of 2018 had helped the club make inroads to breaking a 41-game losing streak.

“With the presidents changing regularly and senior coaches changing regularly, the first step was probably to put some stability back in the club,” he said.

“I think that’s rubbed off on the playing group. From talking to the boys, they’ve said training was hard at times because they just didn’t have the numbers to do what they wanted to do.

“It was tough for the boys in that way, so I think they enjoyed and bonded together because they owed it to each other to turn up to training. If your mate’s not turning up to training, they’re sort of letting you down and it makes the night a bit of a waste of time.”

Darren said Corio was looking at playing internal games but would canvass players’ thoughts next week.

“We’ve thrown to them a few ideas that Joel and I have,” he said. “We’ll listen to the players and try create something that’s fun and enjoyable and we can continue to work on . . . getting better.”