CIPRIANI’S ACHING FOR THIS
Danny missed out on Wasps’ last triumph in agony.. now he wants to make up for lost time
ABOVE all Danny Cipriani remembers the pain.
It was a day of glory for Wasps, becoming English champions for the fourth time in six years.
But their player of the year stood out of shot, propped up on crutches, trying to keep the weight off his fractured and dislocated right ankle.
“It was the first time I was allowed out of hospital and my ankle was throbbing throughout the whole 80 minutes,” Cipriani recalled. “I watched the whole game pain-killered off my head!”
When the final was over, World Cup winners Lawrence Dallaglio and Josh Lewsey brought the trophy over and Cipriani had his picture taken (above).
He smiled. And why wouldn’t he? He was 20, his first start for England had been sensational, his injury would mend and Wasps would keep on winning.
“The year before that we had won the European Cup,” said Cipriani. “So I thought every year was going to be like that.”
That was nine years ago. Wasps have won nothing since. Cipriani left the club in 2010 and moved first to Australia, then Manchester. In his absence, Wasps came within an hour of bankruptcy.
So you can forgive club boss Dai Young and his mercurial fly-half a lump in the throat when they return to Twickenham today to play Exeter for the Premiership crown.
Only Cipriani, now 29, says he will not feel that way as he walks on to the pitch past the spot where he looked on helplessly on Wasps’ last visit.
“I don’t feel emotional about it because there’s a job to be done,” he said. “I’ve come back here with no emotion, no nothing. I’ve come here to lead these boys. It seems like I’ve done it quietly and I have.
“Wasps is dear to my heart, it’s my first club. But I’d kind of agreed to join another club when Dai met me and said he wanted me to come in and lead a team.” Cipriani admits the lure of returning to Wasps was “huge” from a sentimental standpoint, but that he agreed only after looking at the squad and concluding it was the option that gave him his best chance of trophies.
And so it is that he finds himself playing for the biggest domestic trophy of them all.
Not as the free-scoring strike runner he was in 2008 when Wasps carried all before them, but as the wily quarterback and manipulator of defences he has become.
With full-back Kurtley Beale lost to injury, Wasps need their fly-half to roll back the years today.
In a game too close to call, a bit of stardust could go a long way.