CIPRIANI EXCLUSIVE
Constant stories were like machine gun attack on me
THE playboy image is shattered the moment Danny Cipriani opens his front door. There are no personalised pool tables, no mirrors on the ceiling and no other sure signs of a party boy prince. In fact, his two-bedroom flat, on a quiet residential street in Leamington Spa, feels more like student digs complete with mismatched furniture, anonymous beige carpet and inherited chandeliers.
‘People have their perceptions but how much do they actually know?’ says the 30-year-old.
‘ The amount of nonsense that’s been written about me, man, it’s insane. What happens in politics? We had to decide our fate about Brexit but how much of what we’re told is the truth?’
Cipriani is referring to the headlines that have stalked him throughout his career; from celebrity girlfriends, to court cases, to glowing reviews about the most gifted player of his generation.
‘When I was 22 or 23, I was constantly worrying about perceptions,’ he says. ‘What’s this person thinking about me? What’s that person thinking about me? People tried to pigeonhole me.
‘It was consuming and I struggled with it; the stories and the side-plots. This perception that I was always out partying. It was like a machine gun of constant shots... but it doesn’t bother me now.’
Cipriani, who recently trained with David Haye, is at home watching the boxing from his sofa. It is a replay of the WBA lightweight fight between Katie Taylor and Jessica McCaskill at York Hall.
‘What I like about boxing is that 90 per cent of the time — asides from the odd dodgy decision like Gennady Golovkin — the best fighter always wins,’ he says. ‘If you don’t put it in, you won’t win.’
Perhaps Cipriani would achieve more global success if he was reborn as a cruiser-weight fighter. Here is an individual dedicated to his craft — fasting 20 hours a day to recover from his recent knee injury — yet his unique skill i s deceptively reflected by four England starts in a decade.
By the start of the next Six Nations in seven weeks, it will be 10 years since his stunning debut against Ireland when Brian Ashton, who picked him, described him as the finest prospect he had ever seen, while Warren Gatland predicted that he could be a bigger superstar than Jonny Wilkinson. So where did it go off script for the once princely No 10 tipped to win 100 caps?
‘If Warren Gatland or Brian Ashton had been in charge, perhaps that would have happened,’ he says. ‘Different people have different philosophies. Maybe I could have done more to fit in with different coaches but that wouldn’t have been true to myself. It would be fake.
‘With Martin Johnson, we trained for three hours on a Thursday before we played Australia i n 2008. I respectfully said, “I think we’ve done enough,” and I guess he didn’t like the fact a 21-year-old was saying that to him. I thought we would be sluggish. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
‘Then Lewis Moody moaned about how I drove a Ferrari to training but he had no idea about the story behind it. Why did I have a Ferrari? This guy had said as soon as I start running after breaking my ankle, he’ll lend me his Ferrari for a month. Every young kid wants to drive a Ferrari. What a nice thing for someone to do. It was delivered to my door, fully insured and the conclusion was that I’m some arrogant young kid who thinks he knows everything. How backwards is that?
‘I don’t know what I would change, really. Perhaps I should have gone to Melbourne for one year instead of two to give myself a run up to the 2015 World Cup. That was the decision I made. I knew I wasn’t going to get picked but I gave it everything in my audition... I could sleep easy.’
Cipriani’s DVD collection includes
a documentary about Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The only photograph is an image of his father’s cricket team from the early nineties. His view on Keven Pietersen’s cricket exile? ‘He could still go out there and kill it. You’d have to pick him, wouldn’t you? He’s reaching the end now but four years ago you’d build a team around him and Ben Stokes.’
All big personalities with big opinions. The debate over Cipriani’s international inclusion is still open. He is arguably England’s most gifted fly-half – offering a different skillset to Owen Farrell – and will continue to make his case for Wasps in today’s Champions Cup game against La Rochelle. His downfall is the perception that he has the wrong character to be a No 2.
Toulon, Stade Francais and Lyon have all tabled big-money offers to entice him to turn his back on England when his Wasps contract expires at the end of the season but D-Day has been postponed until the New Year.
‘I can’t even think about leaving Wasps right now but next month is decision time so you need a plan A, B and C,’ he says. ‘I still want to play for England and it comes down to having a stormer in games like this. I’m excited about this chapter and the next chapter. I’ve learnt a lot along the way and I’m still right in the middle of it.’
I said to Martin Johnson, “I think we’ve trained enough now” — I guess he didn’t like that