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Former Super League target forced to retire at 27 due to injury

Only five years ago, Ash Taylor was being paid three million dollars a year at Gold Coast Titans, but now his career is over at the age of just 27 due to a hip injury.

Taylor has had persistent issues with his hips since 2020 and surgery on them and they have seen him play his last game according to NRL.com.

Taylor was regarded as one of the hottest properties in the NRL when he signed that huge deal back in 2017, but the lack of success achieved at Gold Coast culminated in questions being thrown his way.

This led to him being dropped from the team by former St Helens coach Justin Holbrook and by September Gold Coast’s former talisman was released from his contract.

Even before this happened, Super League clubs had been sniffing around the out of favour halfback with rumoured interest from Super League Champions St Helens at one stage.

However, he chose to bet it all on a train and trial contract at New Zealand Warriors ahead of the 2022 season. Ironically, his first appearance for the Warriors came against the Titans as they lost 20-18 in Round Two of this season. That day, he picked up another hip injury a recurring problem in his career and this has now spelt the end of his career leading to his retirement after 114 appearances.

On this former St Helens boss and current Warriors coach Nathan Brown said after their 21-20 win over Canberra: “Ash is obviously having a difficult time with his hip and things aren’t going great there.

“It is probably a pretty fair statement that I don’t think Ash will be playing rugby league anymore. He is going through that process at the moment of transitioning from not playing to thinking about what the future looks like.

“We are moving back to New Zealand and Ash is from Queensland but hopefully there is something in the game somewhere in the Queensland area for Ash where he can stay involved.”

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