Bouncing back ... Tahj Minniecon. Photo: Getty Images
Western Sydney Wanderers coach Tony Popovic reckons Tahj Minniecon's return to the A-League is one of the “great stories” of the season – and he might be onto something.
Barely six months ago, Minniecon looked like joining the conga line of footballers who could have been anything but instead threw it all away.
Overweight, unfit and seemingly disinterested in making something of his immense talent, the 23-year old looked lost after the collapse of Gold Coast United.
Even though the embattled club played a raft of juniors in its final season, Minniecon was an infrequent starter and had seemingly lost all the confidence that made him look like a future star at Brisbane Roar.
However, he was given a trial at the Western Sydney Wanderers in the off-season and subsequently did enough to earn a one-year contract.
Determined to make it work, he lost eight kilograms over the course of pre-season and, in the post-match of the Wanderers' 1-0 win over Brisbane Roar on Sunday, Popovic revealed Minniecon “had dropped 15 kilos” from the time he arrived.
His coach believes the ex-Young Socceroos' winger still has a long way to go to recover his full fitness but that he's finally on the right path.
“He started in Wellington, which was his first 90 minutes in God knows how long and he's coming along nicely,” Popovic said before training at Blacktown International Sportspark on Wednesday. “He's got a lot of talent. He hasn't quite got the power back that we know Tahj had once before but each day that's getting better and better. His fitness is getting better and his quality has always been there. The biggest thing for him now is that he's enjoying his football and he wants to be a footballer again.”
Popovic said Minniecon deserved a second chance and predicted he would be destined for big things if he could put together a whole pre-season next year.
“What happened in the past, happened in the past, for whatever reason. But now he's enjoying himself with a smile on his face,” he said. “He's still got a long way to go and I don't think we'll see the best of him until next year, to be honest, once he gets a full and proper pre-season under his belt. He had a very disrupted pre-season and pretty much a 10-12 week program on his own.
“That's not to say we won't see his quality in the second half of the season. If we didn't believe he had that, we wouldn't have put him on [against Brisbane]. He showed glimpses when he came on as well that his quality is still there.”
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