Tayler-Woolston grew up watching Newport with his father, Andrew, and was treated to a side that featured South Africa internationals Gary Tiechmann and Percy Montgomery in the pre-regional era.<\/p>\n
After captaining Cardiff Met and Wales Students then playing for Newbridge, he got the chance to pull on a black and amber jersey for the first time against Cardiff on permit in October 2015.<\/p>\n
A permanent move followed, but the flanker was unable to be at his best.<\/p>\n
Tayler-Woolston came out to his family in his late teens \u2013 “I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction from my parents, they weren’t bothered at all” \u2013 but kept secrets in rugby settings.<\/p>\n
“I was sort of living a double life, and then you are lying to yourself,” he said.<\/p>\n
“My biggest worry was that I would be judged based on my sexuality rather than my rugby skill.<\/p>\n
“I think it was my second year with Newport that I started to think that I had to tell people, that I couldn’t bottle things up any more.<\/p>\n
“It was mentally draining and I was constantly on guard. I wanted to go to dinner with my partner, I wanted to hold their hand without constantly looking over my shoulder.”<\/p>\n
Relatively new in the squad, Tayler-Woolston’s biggest fear was being rejected.<\/p>\n
He wondered how the coaching staff react, and whether they would continue to pick him?<\/p>\n
“All those ideas were building in my head because you read horror stories online,” he added.<\/p>\n
“I felt that I was lying to my team-mates because I couldn’t be my true, authentic self around them.<\/p>\n
“It is tiring being on guard all of the time, wondering what people would think, whether I would be isolated and rejected.<\/p>\n
“I love pulling on the black and amber jersey, I never take it for granted and it means so much.<\/p>\n
“It would have been devastating to be rejected by my club and city, but thankfully I’ve never faced that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tayler-Woolston grew up watching Newport with his father, Andrew, and was treated to a side that featured South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-748009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}