ASH TAYLOR HAS found peace.

Peace with himself, his critics and the infamous $3 million contract which threatened to crush his promising NRL career and send him down an opal mine.

It has taken the Gold Coast Titans star two miscarriages, a baby boy, proposal, another pregnancy, surgery, an outback soul-searching expedition and the help of many to get Taylor to where he is today.

And he isn’t looking back.

“I’m 100 times stronger now,” Taylor told the Sunday-Mail in the lead-up to the 2021 NRL season.

“Nothing fazes me anymore. My focus in life is being a father and then playing footy.

“My little fella (Oscar, 1) has brought me back down to earth.

“You could say he saved me – he brought a new life to me. He makes me strive to keep going.”

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM

IN JUNE, 2019, Taylor hit rock bottom. At the age of 24, it all became too much.

He was in the first year of a $1 million-a-season contract, making him one of the highest paid players in the NRL.

The Titans were on a downward spiral, struggling to win games and destined for the wooden spoon as the future of coach Garth Brennan came under the spotlight.

The pressure was piling on Taylor and he wasn’t delivering on the Gold Coast’s massive investment.

Away from the field, his partner Montana Stenner had suffered two miscarriages and was in the early stages of a third pregnancy.

Taylor made the decision to walk away from the game mid-season.

“It was all crumbling at once,” he said.

“It’s hard to pinpoint it exactly.

“I was watching Montana go through that, have to have surgery, and I was trying to focus on my footy.

“It still hurts today. We think about what could have been, what we could have had.

“When we fell pregnant with Oscar we refused to believe it. We didn’t get our hopes up. We thought ‘it’s not going to happen’. It wasn’t until 20 weeks that we thought we should start telling people.

“I took my time to go through that period and I’m out the other side now. I’m as happy as ever.

“We’ve got a little girl coming now. I can’t wait to be dad to a girl.”

During his break, Taylor travelled home to St George, 550km west of Brisbane, and the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge, just south of the Queensland-NSW border.

It was there he disappeared “40 foot” down a mine shaft and manned a jackhammer alongside his uncle.

Taylor began to blast away his problems.

“I’d had enough of being in the limelight – I wanted to be myself,” he said.

“It’s pretty hard being an elite athlete, you can’t even go to the grocery store without being recognised.

“Now that isn’t a bad thing for me. I love going out in the public. But at the time, with what I was going through in life, it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be left alone.

“I went out to see my uncles and had a great chat with them. We have a family business out there opal mining. We go underground. It’s old-school hard work.

“We were down there away from everything. There’s no phone reception, it was great to get away.

“I didn’t want to spend too long out there because I probably wouldn’t have come back.”

After a few days out west, Taylor returned to the Gold Coast and sought the help of a psychologist.

He was also mentored by club legend Preston Campbell, welfare officer Peter Smith and Clinton Schultz, a fellow Indigenous man and counsellor who Taylor admires.

Taylor credits those people, among others, for turning his life and career around.

“Telling someone about my problems lifted a weight off my shoulders,” he said.

“It’s OK to ask for help if you’re not yourself. I said I couldn’t do it anymore and left.

“I had to let it run its course. It didn’t happen overnight. I still had to do something about it.”

THE GAMBLING RUMOURS

TAYLOR’S DECISION TO immediately walk away from the game saw the NRL rumour mill kick into overdrive.

Besides his own battles, Taylor maintains he had personal family issues to attend to and for the first time addresses suggestions he was battling a gambling problem.

“At the time I was punting like a normal person would,” he said.

“I wasn’t out of control. It was all speculation.

“It (rumours) didn’t really hurt me because I had already come out about me not being myself.

“Everyone wants to have their two cents but it doesn’t faze me. If I read something on social media it doesn’t mean anything.”

With his family coming under attack from social media trolls, Taylor admits he contemplated giving the game away.

He questioned whether it was all worth it, but now realises he would have made a mistake throwing away everything he had created.

“I would have left the NRL scene and ruined my life,” he said.

“I would have gone back to working and being an average adult.

“It crosses my mind today – imagine if I didn’t play footy? How different would my life be?

“This is the life I chose. It’s a luxury but it’s a lot of pressure as well.”

A $3 MILLION MISTAKE

TAYLOR WAS ONE of the NRL’s hottest prospects in late 2017 when the Titans locked him up to a club record deal, keeping him at the Gold Coast until the end of 2021.

Ever since signing with the Brisbane Broncos as a 13-year-old, Taylor was considered to be an NRL star in the making.

While he has lived with pressure and expectation for most of his life, Taylor didn’t envisage the pressure being a million-dollar man would bring.

“If I knew how much pressure I would get from signing that big deal then I probably wouldn’t have signed it,” Taylor said.

“I was picked up by the Broncos at a young age. It’s been a long time in the limelight, especially nowadays with social media. You come under more scrutiny.

“It is a tough gig but it’s part of life. I have accepted it. I’m at peace with it.”

Taylor is now entering the final season of the much-talked about contract and will play his 100th NRL game when the Titans kick-off their 2021 campaign against New Zealand on March 13.

After switching from his favoured position of halfback to five-eighth, Taylor had a strong finish to 2020 as the Titans made a late charge under new coach Justin Holbrook to finish ninth on the ladder.

Taylor understands his next contract may not be worth the same kind of money.

There is a chance he may have to leave the Gold Coast but he hopes to remain in Titans colours for years to come.

He proposed to Montana during the recent off-season but was unable to get down on one knee after undergoing surgery on both hips. She said ‘yes’.

“I am happy here, my family is happy here, I’d love to stay here,” he said.

“We’ll see what comes. I haven’t had any meetings with the club. I’m optimistic but it’s going to be a challenge.

“I’d been battling these injuries for a few years. The last two years have been a struggle.

“I can’t stress enough how happy I am with my mindset. I am pain-free and am feeling as happy as ever in the mind.

“I want to be more consistent. It makes it a lot easier when the team’s on a roll. Coming off the back end of the year we had, hopefully we can start the season well.”