By Tara Murray
It hasn’t been the season that Western United women had been after so far, but one of the highlights has been the return of Adriana Taranto to the field.
One of Western’s inaugural players, Taranto injured her knee in March requiring her to have a knee reconstruction.
After months on the sidelines, Taranto made her return as a substitute in United’s first match of 2025.
“It was so exciting,” she said. “It had been a pretty long year, a different year.
“I was so happy to be out there again. It’s something you can’t take for granted.
“You want to get back out there and help get the win and get some consistency and hopefully get two wins in a row.”
Taranto said while she was disappointed to be on the sidelines, the break away from the field was kind of a blessing in disguise.
She said you see a different side of things on the sidelines.
“You don’t know how long you are going to be playing at a professional level,” she said. “There’s a lot of credit to the girls and myself that have gone through this, it takes a lot to go through it.
“There’s so many people that threw their support around me.”
Taranto said she was lucky much of her recovery time was in the off season.
“There was a lot of club support,’ she said. “It ended up being a smooth process in the terms of an ACL.
“You hear stories and different things about setbacks. I was able to hit my benchmarks and worked really hard as well.
“I had the right people around me. I went off how I felt and I felt good and got used to it.”
Taranto said when she went down injured, she didn’t set a concrete date that she had targeted as her return.
Round 10 was the game she had been hoping for, which is what she achieved.
Taranto’s first game was an extra special game, with her twin sister Mel becoming the second United women’s player to play 50 games for the club.
Adriana said it just happened to be luck that it turned out that way.
“I didn’t plan that,” she said. “I was umming and arring about the week before, but we decided to leave it one more week.
“It just happened to be her 50th which was pretty special. I came on in the 75th minute and she said it gave her an extra boost.”
Having played all their soccer together, Adriana said Mel had felt weird without her sister being there with her.
Adriana had been through that situation when Mel did her ACL a number of years ago.
Now back on the field, Taranto is keen to continue on building.
“I’m trying to find that balance and not putting pressure on myself,” she said. “I want to get my minutes up and get my fitness up.
“It’s important to get the little things right.”
As a team Taranto said they wanted to find that consistency which they know that they have and win some more games to put them into finals contention again.
