Tim Taranto was ready for a rest. By the end of last season his body was sore and his mind was tired, too, worn down by his biggest and longest but best season yet. As it turned out though, he wasn’t yet done. A few weeks after football finished he found himself in California, spending two long days traipsing around Disneyland with his three little brothers.

“It was seven, eight-hour days. And it was about 40 degrees both days. It was fun because the boys had fun, but it took it out of me. It was actually two of the hardest days ever, just rides and rides, food, more rides, walking around in the heat,” said Taranto, who also spent time hanging out with Davis, Hudson, Griffin, his father and his stepmothers at their home in Dallas.

“Dad gets out here a few times a year to visit, but I get over every off-season or at least every second one. And most of the time we just hang out. When I’m there it’s just chilling with my brothers, going to the park, playing with them. It’s just good to have a bit of time with them and to make the most of it, because I don’t get to see them in person all that much.

“The boys are really into the footy, they love it. They replicate Jeremy Cameron swinging onto his left foot, and they love Toby Greene. They know all the players; they just love it. So it was good to get that time, and good to get away. Harry Himmelberg and Tommy Sheridan were over there at the same time, and we met up and kind of bounced between California and New York. It was one of the best trips I’ve had. I came back thinking I’d had a really good break.”

He also came back with some plans. If there was a bright side to Stephen Coniglio, Callan Ward and others falling down with injuries last year it was that Taranto got to step right into the midfield, and stay there. It was where he wanted to be, and he loved it there, but it still took some getting used to and asked more of him than simply getting his hands on the ball.

 He was only in his third year, after all. “I definitely enjoyed it, but it was kind of difficult, to be honest, when players kept going down. The midfield was changing week to week and it was hard to work on that continuity and connection and try to keep that going,” Taranto said.

 “Everyone wants big minutes in the midfield. Especially when you’re young, you just want to get into the midfield. But it does take a toll physically. I know that by round 17, 18, 19 my body was begging for a rest. I was sore and I know a couple of the other boys felt the same way. It was a good test for us in the end. You had to keep turning up even when you were sore and try to keep pushing on. You just had to claw and grind and do everything you could to get through.”

 That he did so was not missed. Taranto finds this hard to explain, and he’s not exactly sure when he began to pick up on it. But as the weeks went by last year he started to sense that his teammates weren’t wondering how he would go, and what he would do. They seemed to just know, and to believe in him. It was a feeling that he liked: to be trusted and relied upon.

“It’s hard to say how it happened, but it’s something you kind of feel. I could tell the guys kind of expected more or assumed that I was going to do what we needed. It was just a sense I got with the way people talked to me on the field and off the field as well. They never had any doubt in their voice, that was something I just picked up on,” Taranto said.

 “I just thought I did my job last year. I had some impact in big games which was good, and I was consistent, which I try to be. But I felt like the boys knew what to expect of me every week and that they respected me and knew I’d get the job done and do my best to beat off whatever other mids we were playing against. They had confidence in me every week and that’s something everyone wants in this game, to become one of those players.”

 Taranto did so well he finished as the GIANTS’ Club Champion, winning his first Kevin Sheedy Medal. But when he came back to start pre-season training he had plans that stretched much further than the midfield. They were all put on hold when his shoulder fell out of place 10 minutes into the first scratch match against Sydney. But he knew how well Josh Kelly was training, that Coniglio would be back and that Ward wouldn’t be too far behind him. He didn’t want to become someone who could only ever play in the centre square. And moving into the midfield had taken him away from other things he liked to do and wanted to keep getting better at.

 “It’s my number one position, the midfield, and I love to play there. But in the future I see myself as hopefully one of the best mid-forwards in the game. That’s what I want to do one day so that was the thing coming into this year that I had in my head to work on,” he said.

 “I sat down with Lenny Hayes a couple of times throughout the pre-season and we just went through some things that I wanted to do. Basically, I wanted to get marking back into my game, and that was probably the number one thing I worked on over pre-season. I did a heap of practice on that. And kicking more goals was the other one. They were the on-field things, and off field I just wanted to improve my leadership and develop that as much as I could.”

 The Swans game put a hold on his on-field ambitions, which Taranto knew the second he felt his shoulder go. He had reconstructive surgery about a month ago now and is using his time now to let it rest, repair and get started on some basic movement. “I’m literally taking it day by day and not looking any further than that,” he said. “Which we all are, with the way things are at the moment.”

From there? Who knows. But when he got injured during his debut season, missing games with an ankle injury, Taranto had some doubts about how well he would handle a rehab program and whether he would be the same player when he finally did get back to play.

Those questions aren’t there anymore. “I’m pretty meticulous with my rehab and my body and all that kind of stuff. That’s something I learnt when I got injured in my first year. I got confidence that I knew how to rehab something and that I would be fine when I came out the other side. With this, I’ve had less of that anxiety, that uncertainty,” Taranto said.

 “The good thing is, however long you’re on the sidelines is time you have to really work on your own game and develop things that are harder to work on when you’re in with the main group all the time and just don’t get the chance to do it as much. Obviously rehab is never where you want to be, but you do get the chance to purely do what you need to do to get better.

 “That was the plan and who honestly know what happens from here. Early days I was just thinking, ‘I’ll get ready and come back and pick things back up do what I was doing.’ Now I’m just trying to take it one day at a time and not think about footy otherwise I’ll go crazy. I’m just thinking about getting my shoulder a little bit better every day and every week. Who knows when my next game will be, but we’ll see. Until then I’ll just do everything that I can.”