DO WE GET THE ATHLETES OUR CULTURE DESERVES?

DANNY CIPRIANI may consider his wrists golden but you wouldn’t give tuppence for his brain, or sense of timing. In a week when a high-profile English sportsman was in the dock over the ramifications of a drunken night out, Cipriani ended up charged and convicted in Jersey, the result of an equally ill-advised late session. The difference being that while Ben Stokes endured an 11-month ‘ordeal’ — the words of his legal team — before being found not guilty of affray, Cipriani’s offence was over and done, found guilty and punishment passed, within 48 hours. Whether the same is now true of his international career remains to be seen. Eddie Jones, the England coach, had always seemed a reluctant enthusiast for his talents. It took the form of Cipriani’s life to finally get him back into the England team on the tour of South Africa and, even then, Jones spent as much time spelling out the reasons he could be booked on the first plane home from Johannesburg, as he did finding motivations for putting him in the XV. When Cipriani finally started, and justified his inclusion, in the final Test, it seemed as if he may at last have won Jones around. And now, if we’re not back to square one, Cipriani has certainly found a rather large snake to slither down. Jones, the pragmatist, has no need to rule in or out just yet and can let Cipriani’s club, Gloucester, take the heat. Equally, however, as a pragmatist, he knows a team cannot be built around an individual with such scant sense of responsibility. Cipriani’s behaviour in Jersey, including the manhandling of a female police officer, showed a catastrophic lack of awareness. Not just of his professional status, but of the mood of the time. The Stokes case, and events on the recent Ashes tour, have thrown the drinking culture that pervades elements of English sport into sharp relief. Too many of the bodies that somehow style themselves above the sweaty world of football still have players who treat a tour as a glorified jolly boys’ outing. Harlequins had visited Jersey days before Gloucester and a staff member fell out of a second-floor hotel window at roughly 4am. There are no further details, other than Harlequins had played a pre-season friendly earlier in