Ash Taylor cut loose: Titan’s $1m man told to look elsewhere for next year

The Gold Coast Titans have told their million-dollar man, Ash Taylor, that he’s out: the 26-year-old is “free to look for other options,” sources close to the club have revealed following their exit from the NRL finals last weekend.

Taylor’s $960,000-a-year deal with the Titans comes to an end next month.

The Gold Coast club is believed to be looking elsewhere for their playmakers heading into 2022. So far they’ve invested in Jamal Fogarty, Toby Sexton, and Tanah Boyd, all of whom are on significantly less coin on their current deals.

The team’s million-dollar man has been on the outer for some time now.

He was nowhere to be seen as the Titans lost by a single point to the Roosters in their do-or-die final on Saturday. He played 16 games for the Gold Coast this season, including a six-game string between rounds 18 and 23s as the team hunted an eight-place finish.

When the NRL finals rolled around, however, Justin Holbrook gave Jamal Fogarty and Gold Coast’s versatile handyman Tyrone Peachey the nod as the team’s seven and six up in Townsville.

As The Sporting Base understands, soon-to-be unrestricted free agent Taylor is already attracting bites, but maybe facing a drastic haircut if he wants to stay in the NRL beyond 2021.

The Raiders are one club sniffing around the former $1m star, though they’re expecting a cutthroat deal to bring him on board for a year or two. The Australian’s Brent Read has tipped them as frontrunners for the halfback’s signature, and reported this week that Taylor has already been shown the door at the Gold Coast to boot.

Taylor’s pay cut, The Sporting Base can reveal, could be as much as $750k; his manager has been shopping him around to clubs with a lowly $250k price tag, though he’s interested in scooping up a fair bit more than that to play on, if he can manage it.

The Bulldogs are another team interested in Taylor, if they can strike a cheap bargain.

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Kyle Flanagan hasn’t worked out for the blue-and-white club, and they’re bringing in a surplus of new players in 2022, many of whom are squeezing out the salary cap. Canterbury-Bankstown has yet to formally approach Taylor’s management yet, however.

The Tigers made a phone call recently regarding Taylor, but aren’t expected to step into the signing race.

The Sporting Base also heard the Dragons inquired into Taylor’s availability earlier this year, but since shelved the idea after the explosive emergence of talented trio Sullivan, Sloan, and Amone.

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