What does the mother who worked every hour to give him the best start in life think of how he’s squandered his huge talent?
NEXT to Jonny Wilkinson, he is quite possibly the most recognised rugby star in Britain. But there could be no greater contrast between the clean cut young man who won the World Cup for England and the dishevelled and distinctly sheepish figure of Danny Cipriani who shuffled out of a court in Jersey yesterday after two nights in a police cell.
How ironic that when the teenage Cipriani first burst on to the rugby stage as a prodigiously talented teenager he was talked of as the player who would one day take Wilkinson’s place in the national side.
Yet such is his chequered career of wasted opportunity and chances recklessly blown that now, at the age of 30, he instead looks back on an off-field CV that dwarfs that of his playing career.
Just 16 appearances in an England shirt bears vivid testimony to the squandering of that genius.
In the near decade and a half since his emergence as the wunderkind, a litany of unedifying episodes in his private life have generated almost as many garish headlines as his brief flashes of brilliance on the rugby field. What most people think about when they catch sight of his handsome, tousle-haired features aren’t Grand Slams and Triple Crowns, but seedy liaisons with nightclub strippers, publicity hungry reality TV stars and celebrity wannabes.
But even they pale alongside the deeply unsavoury episode that unfolded in the early hours of Wednesday morning in the Little Drift bar in St Helier, where Cipriani and his Gloucester team mates were on a pre-season bonding session.
CErTaInLYit was another of those seemingly endless self-inflicted Pr disasters that Cipriani, raised by his taxi- driving mother who poured everything into giving her son the best chance in life, specialises in.
This one, like others in his shameful back catalogue, was fuelled by drink. It ended with him being fined £2,000 for assaulting a nightclub bouncer, resisting arrest and bruising the neck of a woman police officer at whom he screamed foulmouthed abuse.
That it should happen in the very week when another of our brightest sporting heroes, cricketer Ben Stokes, was in court after a drunken fight outside a Bristol nightclub – he was cleared by a jury of affray – only added to the sense of gloom that the two of our national sports that most embrace Corinthian values of gentlemanly conduct are tarnished by yobbishness.
The tragedy for Danny Cipriani is that he will forever be a case of what might have been. But for all his natural ability, first spotted on the playing fields of south-west London when he was just 11, it has been matched by a self-destructive flaw. The seeds were sown almost from the off. Even before he pulled on his first England jersey, he was kicked out of the 2008 Six nations squad for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ after being photographed leaving a nightclub.
But this latest fracas has surely left his international future hanging by a thread. as one England insider said yesterday: ‘It is a question of trust and Danny has repeatedly shown he cannot be trusted. Can he really be given another chance?’
Tongues were wagging that a career which began with such promise, only to stop and stutter, might finally be over – just as it seemed he had finally found an England coach in australian Eddie Jones who was persuaded to give him a chance.
Others, including the legendary former World Cup winning captain Martin Johnson, were simply not prepared to take a risk on him.
The gossip is seldom tinged with compassion, for rugby is a hard team game in which people have long memories and are meant to look after each other before themselves.
Yet here was a young man who as a teenager, said friends, always exuded arrogance. ‘If he didn’t think another player was any good, he just wouldn’t pass to them … ever,’ a fellow player recalled.
Even when he was playing in his school first XV he would sometimes do his own warm-up routines if he didn’t think much of the one the team were doing on the pitch.
at the same time he possessed the most extraordinary skill. Howard Parker, who spotted him on a scouting mission for south-west London club rosslyn Park, marvelled at his artistry in delivering a one-handed american football- style pass from one side of the pitch to another.
Behind all this precocious ability lay another more compelling story of the blood, sweat and toil shed by his mother anne Cipriani, who raised him single-handed on a housing estate in Putney after his father Jay left to return to his native Trinidad when Danny was a young boy.
She worked long hours to pay for private schooling, often doing double shifts through the night and leaving him with babysitters as she criss-crossed the capital in her cab.
But then Mrs Cipriani knows all about a tough upbringing. She herself had been abandoned in a hospital at three days old and brought up in a Dr Barnardo’s home. She had no brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles. Her marriage to Jay, whom she had met on a holiday to Tobago, broke up when Danny was six. Determined to stand on her own two feet she set about doing ‘the knowledge’, the test for would-be
black cab drivers.
She didn’t take holidays, in order to save money for the £3,000 a year fees at Donhead, a Roman Catholic prep school in Wimbledon which introduced her son to rugby.
As a boy he stuck with Rosslyn Park despite approaches from Queens Park Rangers and Reading football clubs. He could also have played cricket for Surrey. Tony Durrant, his coach at Rosslyn Park, recalled how at 14 he used to preface sentences with ‘when I play for England’.
He won a scholarship to The Oratory, the Catholic boarding school in Reading, but missed his mother so much he returned home after a couple of years, switching to Whitgift School in Croydon. His mother wanted her only son to be a doctor but his heart was set on rugby.
In 2003, he led Whitgift to victory in signed school, at renown drawn So the the far Daily age national making to so was by took good. of the Mail Wasps fast-tracked 17. hold, his glamorous academy But U15 first when as Cup Cipriani his team into at and sporting still side Twickenham, debut England’s was was at of fame. half flirted The of He the with Cheeky dated Romanian-born fame Monica in Girls, the early who Irimia, pop 2000s. briefly singers one TV a He Sunday girl was Larissa then tabloid linked Summers of their with who night reality told of passion: and we had ‘Danny fast, was frantic all over sex me in about three different positions on the bed,’ she gushed. ‘It was all over quite quickly, but it was exciting. He was very dominant and knew what he wanted to do.’ There was a sting in this lurid tale – Larissa born was Darren a transsexual Pratt. Cipriani who later was began dating buxom TV presenter Kelly Brook. He was just 20 and she 28. He modelled naked with only a rugby ball to conceal his, er, tackle and auditioned as a topless dancer on an MTV show – a favour for a friend, he later pointed out.
Bynow he was making front and back page headlines. A training pitch dust-up with fellow England player Josh Lewsey in which Cipriani was left nursing a bloody nose and cut lip also made the news bulletins. Advertising contracts still came pouring in though.
All the same he claimed he had been unprepared for the scrutiny that came with life in the spotlight. Coaches, meanwhile, were questioning in whether his lifestyle was affecting in his commitment to the sport.
A At 22, he started to suffer from de depression and moved to Australia. B But the off-field problems followed hi him Down Under. He was accused of taking a bottle of vodka from a Melbourne bar and was fined by his club, the Rebels. Later he and a team mate were left out of a match for ‘failing to meet standards’.
He was not picked for either the 2011 or 2015 rugby world cups. England coach after England coach were reluctant to place their trust in him and turned instead to younger players. Cipriani seemed to have had his day, a career cut short by his own stupidity.
Back in Britain in 2013, he reunited with Kelly Brook who nursed him back to health after being hit by a bus while out on a pub crawl in Leeds. They split up soon after and in her autobiography Miss Brook claimed Cipriani had given his phone number to a dancer while they were on holiday in Las Vegas. In 2015 he was arrested after crashing his Mercedes into a taxi at 5am and after a five- day trial was convicted of drink-driving. His playboy reputation continued after an affair with troubled Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan and then US model Jasmine Waltz.
He also dated reality star Katie Price, who dumped him after walking in on him in bed with another woman. Two years ago he began seeing Sky Sports presenter Kirsty Gallacher but ended it, citing the 12-year age gap. The list was endless – among others, he stepped out with fashion model Lara Bingle.
Trouble followed him around. Last year a stripper tried to blackmail him, claiming she had aborted his child.
In a reflective moment he once admitted he dreaded his mother’s reaction to tabloid tales of sexual encounters. The two are extremely close. ‘She has been an incredible influence,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t have got off the starting line without mum.’ Quite what her view will be of the events in Jersey, however, remains to be seen.