Duncan Taylor: 'I'm one of the most injured rugby players ever - but I still love it'

Asked to sum up Duncan Taylor’s contribution to Saracens over the past decade, Mark McCall half-jokingly asks if I have a spare 90 minutes. “For me to answer that question in a couple of sentences would never do justice to what Duncan has done for this club.”

No one has quite put their body on the line for Saracens like Taylor has done since joining the club from Bedford Blues in 2012. Within two weeks, Taylor was having his first surgery to repair his AC joint in his shoulder. “I started as I meant to go on,” the Scotland centre sighs. He lists eight further surgeries and that does not even account for the torn hamstrings, Achilles issues and, most concerningly, a concussion in 2018 that left him with crippling headaches.

“I struggle to keep count of them all,” Taylor admits. “I think I have gone through a bit of a rollercoaster with the injuries. At first, it was like ‘why me?’ Then it is ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this has happened again’ Then I have been through a phase of ‘it has happened now, let’s just crack on’. Now I am back to the stage of thinking ‘this can’t keep happening’.”

In all Taylor estimates that he has spent 40 per cent of his career on the sidelines. “Probably more actually.” The latest setback was a twin ankle and knee problem which put him out for eight weeks. Yet each and every time, Taylor has fought his way back. Asked what drives him through the purgatory of rehab, his answer is simply love.

“Probably the love of what I am doing,” Taylor said. “I love the environment. I love the club. I love playing rugby. I love the day-to-day sessions. I love the boys. For all the aches and the pains and the injuries, it is always worth getting back and training and playing with my team. That’s all I have ever known and it is what I am passionate about. If that passion and desire had ever died out over the years then I would probably have called it a day. But I have always wanted to get back and become better than I was. I have never felt that I was done. I always felt I could still contribute to the group.”

It is a mark of Taylor’s well-rounded excellence that Saracens have always stood by him. In 2016 when Saracens won their first domestic and European double it was Taylor who was voted players’ player of the season ahead of far more celebrated team-mates. “On the field, especially in the big games, Duncan is always one of the first people picked over some great players down the years,” McCall said of Taylor whose winding childhood took him between Scotland, Australia and Olney in Buckinghamshire.

This, however, is the final stretch for Taylor at the StoneX Stadium with only a remote prospect of a contract extension. By his own admission, the market is brutal and is already developing his plan B options including work experience in the city and devoting more time to his business, Onwards Adventure Vehicles which builds and converts bespoke camper vans.

“People come to us with panel vans which have nothing inside them and we will convert them to whatever it is they are after,” Taylor said. “My only issue is it is down in Penzance so it is a big of a slog to get down there.”

For now Taylor just wants to soak in every last minute of his time at Saracens, who face Ospreys in the Champions Cup last-16 on Sunday. It is the same attitude that Saracens are adopting as a team after their heartbreaking defeat in the Premiership final to Leicester last season. With a home semi-final already secured in the league, Taylor says they are playing with far more liberation this season.

“There’s a genuine buzz about the place,” Taylor said. “What we are really focussed on is taking every week as it comes. I know that sounds quite cliched, but last year we got too obsessed with winning the Premiership. That put us in a position where we were too fearful of losing. In the final last year, we didn’t really fire a shot. We came off the field feeling like we had killed ourselves. We didn’t play how we wanted to play and we died wondering.

“We are trying to get away from that in this run-in, lose that fear of failing and just be free to express ourselves. We don’t want to die wondering. Our main focus going forward into the business end of the season is taking it day by day and really enjoying the run-in. It is going to go really fast so let’s make sure we embrace every moment.”