Our new columnist on why he will not quit on England
The new Telegraph columnist, Danny Cipriani, explains his master plan to break back into the national set-up for this year’s World Cup
‘I’m ready to go to war, to go above and beyond’
Here in Gloucester, it feels as if the exotic mosaic of Danny Cipriani’s career has finally found its natural stage. In a city obsessed with rugby, at a stadium that he likens to the Colosseum, he can lose himself in his craft and let any off-field distractions drift away.
The benefits are self-evident: while widely caricatured as his sport’s eternal renegade, he is at last giving freer rein to his talents as England’s most creative fly-half, becoming the fulcrum of his side, without whom his team-mates visibly struggle. The next two months, with a play-off spot to chase and a World Cup call-up at stake, will be defining. “I’m ready,” he says, “to go to war.”
It is a quiet afternoon at Kingsholm. The clatter of training has died down and we are left alone in the changing room to reflect upon the latest twists of Cipriani’s tale, by now colourful enough to be a film script. Cipriani likes his cinema and the frustration is that, on the international stage at least, he has yet to break free from his casting as the perpetual understudy.
There have been moments: a rapturously-received try against Italy in 2015 and then, on his first England start in a decade, a wonderfully instinctive display in victory over South Africa last summer.
But still he waits for Eddie Jones, who has long preferred Owen Farrell or George Ford at No10, to trust him with star billing. Cipriani, who today joins The
Daily Telegraph as a columnist, is not about to indulge in self-pity at the snub. If his experiences in the public glare have taught him anything, it is that any mis-steps can bring grave consequences. For all that he might nurse wounds at watching the Six Nations from the sidelines, he has not lost faith in his credentials as an England contender.
“I have always seen non-selection as a challenge,” he says. “Keep giving them the question. All that it does is to inspire me to keep pushing the boundary.
“I have five months now, until the World Cup squad is announced, to turn water into wine. Whatever happens, I know that I will have done everything possible to get there.”
Jones has been known to talk ominously of giving his England players “add-ons”. This is why they are sometimes pictured running up hills in weighted vests or hurling each other to the floor in martial arts moves.
Cipriani is one who needs no such invitation. Slavish in his devotion to peak conditioning, he repairs to Malibu each summer to train alongside his friend Laird Hamilton, a Californian icon of big-wave surfing. It is a form of boot-camp paradise.
“We do a lot of weights underwater, different types of cardio,” he says, wistfully. “The conversations constantly stimulate my mind. It’s my happy place, that community in Malibu. I’m surrounded by some of the greatest people from their fields. It keeps me physically strong. It’s not formal training, but I learn about diet, nutrition, different ways to calm the mind. Everyone gathers around at Laird’s house. He’s just a modern-day superhero.”
It is a new-age passion befitting a new-age player. While Cipriani is gifted enough to have won far more than 16 caps by the age of 31, he can at least claim to have enlivened the typical image of an England international.
Listen to Farrell these days and you hear only the consummate team man, rarely venturing beyond robotic platitudes. Cipriani is more naturally free-wheeling, as happy talking about boxing or Formula One as rugby.
There is always an uncertainty, too, about what he is going to do next. In his early twenties, this unpredictability was an image in which he revelled, as he shuttled seamlessly between the training ground and the celebrity circuit. But the intensity of the exposure proved too much, too soon, forcing him to move to Australia.
“I went through a difficult time,” he admits. “You do feel everything is on top of you, being thrown at you. Along the way I have learnt a lot of lessons. The character that people build is not necessarily who I am. As normal as you might feel, something can still happen.”
Last August, in the Channel Islands of all places, something did happen. On a team-bonding evening with Gloucester in Jersey, Cipriani paid a visit to Drift nightclub in St Helier and became involved in an altercation with a doorman, whose tie he noticed had
a camera clipped to it.
He subsequently pleaded guilty to common assault, releasing a statement in which he said he was “mortified” by his actions.
Time has done little to temper that verdict. “I shouldn’t have taken the guy’s tie,” he says. “It was all those years of having a camera put in my face, a paranoia built from being in the limelight so long. I shouldn’t have reacted in the way I did. I shouldn’t have risen to the bait or been antagonised. I’m very calm by nature. It was just one trigger that caused me to do that.” Such, clearly, is the strain of life under the microscope.
“I was going to hand the tie back. I still don’t know how the police were there after only about 20 seconds. Fair play to them, I guess, for answering the call that quickly.”
The lapse was all the more unfortunate given Jones’s prior warning that Cipriani should only be making headlines for his rugby. “It was a reality check that you have to be on your mettle at all points,” he accepts. “You can’t ever allow it to slip. I gave people an excuse to build a persona that is far from who I am.”
Had he burnt his bridges with England? His omission from the autumn squad gave succour to that suspicion, especially given his luminous form for Gloucester. Jones denied it, saying opaquely that Cipriani knew what he needed to do to earn a recall. From his own perspective, the England dream is one that he remains determined not to let slide.
“I never look at it and think, ‘The shirt’s mine,’ ” he says. “Even if I finished last summer like that, I have to continue to do my utmost. At the time, Eddie didn’t feel he wanted to put me in. He felt I could be playing better – and that’s what I’ve got to go and do. Ultimately, he is very diligent with all his players in the wider squad.
“He calls them, telling them what they need to improve. If two heavyweight champions are boxing and they’re even on points, the champion’s going to win. The judges are going to sway towards his side. So, when you’re the challenger, you have to go above and beyond. That’s how I view it.”
If there is a quality that defines Cipriani as a player, beyond his magical passing touch and his remarkably quick thinking, it is his ability to adapt. At Sale, in a team far less star-studded than their rivals, he learnt how to punch above his weight.
At Wasps, alongside a raft of dynamic performers from Elliot Daly to Dan Robson, Christian Wade to Willie le Roux, he could embrace the more expansive rugby that he saw as his calling. “The game felt,” he recalls, “like it was effortless then.”
In Gloucester’s colours, he has undergone another reinvention, as the linchpin around whom all of the finest moves flow. His teammates could not esteem him more highly, even if one of them jeers out of a car window as he poses for the photo-shoot. “They have shown me a lot of respect,” Cipriani says, his gratitude palpable. “In my career, for whatever reason, I’ve had to earn my stripes again and again. But everyone, I hope, can see my perseverance.”