WORLD AT HIS FEET
With one outrageous pass, Cipriani proves he still has...
ONE pass should be all the proof Eddie Jones needs. From his vantage point at Kingsholm, England’s head coach surely saw enough to reprieve Danny Cipriani and pencil him in for the World Cup.
After the controversy of preseason came the stunning riposte. Cipriani’s arrest in Jersey, following a fracas outside a bar, led to doomsday predictions about the end of his Test hopes but he has already taken a significant step towards making a mockery of them.
It was the 30-year- old fly-half’s competitive debut for Gloucester and the club who stood by him, in the eye of a storm, will be glad that they did. He had already helped to create one try when the magic happened.
Using a penalty advantage as his licence to thrill, Cipriani — standing flat and square — dispatched a long pass over three Northampton defenders and into the path of Charlie Sharples, some 21 yards away. The wing didn’t have to break stride as he juggled the gift and scored with it.
Replays confirmed that Cipriani hadn’t even looked. He threw the miracle pass blind. File it away with Finn Russell’s stunning effort against England last season as a modern masterpiece of audacity and technical prowess.
Few players in the world could have pulled it off. Jones can impose whatever disciplinary terms and conditions that he likes but, now that Cipriani has been punished for his latest off-field offences, the man in charge of the national team will know that such rare attacking class cannot be ignored.
In the coming days, we will discover if the national coach is minded to adopt a tough moral stance against Cipriani but the case for doing so is losing impetus fast. Jones the pragmatist will know that, if England find themselves in a tight corner during a World Cup fixture next year, Cipriani has more ability than most to turn the game in a flash. Northampton flanker Tom Wood was working as a pundit at Kingsholm and he brilliantly summed up the threat posed by Gloucester’s new No 10 sorcerer.
‘He tells lies with his eyes,’ he said. ‘He keeps you guessing. It’s the way he holds his feet and waits for a defender to make a decision to jump out. He draws you out of the line, forces you to make a rash decision then gives that killer pass.’ It was certainly a killer pass to Sharples. It killed the back-himor-drop-him debate. Surely.