See, I dont have any issues to the timing of these guys retirement, bar MAYBE Hornby. Cooper was injured for a lot of his final season, not Bennetts fault at all. When he played, he showed he still had it in spades. Fien would have been an absolutely fantastic hooker for us to have in 2013, the issue was the Price played him at halfback. Even Hornbag would have been fine in his final year if we had a decent coach that could use his tactical nous while accounting for his lack of speed.
Ultimately, our issues post-Bennett were recruitment and coaching. It was the club whi signed Price, then re-signed him when it was blatantly obvious how bad he was. It was the club who didnt put succession plans in place for our retiring/leaving stars (even Boyd). It was the club (through C.Young) that signed guys like Hunt, Farrell and Rein to high dollar, long term contracts. It was the club that f**ked up our junior development paths and pushed us into having to do all our recruitment externally.
It looks like systems are in place to fix these issues now, but it was laziness and poor management internally that saw our fall from grace, not a plot by Bennett.
