New Mayo ladies manager offers blank canvas

Ladies boss offers “blank canvas”


Daniel Carey

NEW Mayo ladies football manager Jason Taniane will meet the players for the first time next Friday.
Mayo play Cork in the first round of the National League in the first week of February, and Taniane has promised a “blank canvas” for the start of his two-year term.
“As everybody knows, there’s been a bit of turbulence the last while in Mayo,” the Clonberne, Co Galway native told The Mayo News. “But … I’m taking it like any other team that I start with – this is a blank canvas, and everyone’s on the same level. We just move forward and that’s just it.”
Taniane’s involvement in ladies football stretches back to 1999, when he trained his own club, Kilkerrin/Clonberne, to win the All-Ireland intermediate club title. He enjoyed success in Roscommon, won an All-Ireland intermediate title with Leitrim in 2007, and took charge of Galway for a season. Having spent the last couple of years with men’s teams, however, he “never really expected” to return to the ladies game.
“I had been out of the ladies game since 2008 … but I always looked in at Mayo teams as one with potential, and maybe we might be able to just get it out of them,” he said. “My ambition always is to win as much as you can, but it will be tough for a while … The first thing is to build a team, unite a team together, and after that then, who knows where you can go? Mayo ladies are still one of the top teams in the country, so ... you don’t know where you could end up at the end of the season. Hopefully we’ll be in a good position.”
The Tuam-based Taniane will be finalising his management team in the next few weeks. He works as a gym instructor and personal trainer, so he’s very familiar with the fitness side of sport. But, he emphasises: “Football is the key when you’re involved with a team. It’s grand having a team fit, but they need to be able to play ball, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that with them.”
Taniane was one of six candidates interviewed for the position before his name was the one sent forward by the interview panel for ratification by the Mayo Ladies Football Board. Michael Ryan from Waterford, a member of the interview committee, said he was “confident” that Taniane “up to” the “tough job” of inter-county management.
“He’s well qualified, and I’ve no doubt that now that this name is in place, if everybody that get behind him – players, County Board and supporters – that Mayo will have a very formidable team in the next two years,” Ryan told Midwest Radio.
Ryan said the interviewees were of “a very high standard”, and said Taniane’s two-year term could bring stability after an annus horribilis in Mayo ladies football which saw the county temporarily withdraw from the championship.
“I think Mayo have had seven or eight managers in the last seven or eight years, and that’s something that couldn’t be allowed to continue,” said Ryan. “You have no continuity – different faces, different voices and different systems in place. So now that he’s got a two-year term, he’s got a bit of time to prepare properly ... I would appeal to everybody out there to be patient. Don’t expect results to dramatically improve straight away. Give it a bit of a time.”