PLAYER PROFILE

DANNY CIPRIANI

since. Firstly Cipriani suffered an horrific ankle injury playing for Wasps against Bath just a few weeks after his international bow and was forced to sit out their Guinness Premiership victory over Leicester at Twickenham on the final day of the season. But he made a miraculous recovery, confounding the medical experts and possibly aided by some TLC from new girlfriend Kelly Brook, and was back not only in Wasps colours but also the white and red of England for the Autumn International programme. That high was followed by more lows though as a series of insipid performances – and a number of charged down kicks – gave rise to the suspicion that he had been rushed back to Test rugby far too early, and down to new coach Martin Johnson’s lack of faith in alternatives such as Charlie Hodgson, Shane Geraghty and Toby Flood more than anything else. Then there was the

incident on the Wasps training ground when he made the mistake of getting into a contremps with team-mate and former British Army officer Josh Lewsey and ended up briefly out cold on his backside. His first game of 2009 for Wasps wasn’t a virtuoso performance, either, with two more charged down clearances prompting coach Shaun Edwards to speak openly about the problems with his kicking game.

So with the 2009 Six Nations beckoning, just what is the next twist in the career of the 21-year-old from Surrey, who has hardly been out of the headlines over the past 12 months?

Cipriani says that he has learned from some of the lows of that roller-coaster year that 2008 was.

“You have responsibilities that you have to uphold,” he says. “Obviously I made a mistake when I went out that night before the Scotland match, but it’s

not going to happen again, because I’ve learned from it.”

Clearly Johnson sees him as his long-term first-choice fly-half but Cipriani will need to prove his form and sharpness with Wasps before he slots back into the starting XV – this could see him on the bench for the first couple of games of the tournament before reclaiming the No. 10 shirt.

Cipriani describes the autumn series as “a massive learning curve” and admits that having only recently returned from a long-term injury may have hindered him, as he was “probably concentrating on playing too much”.

“Mentally I feel fine,” he says. “My confidence isn’t going to dip at all. I know what I can produce, there’s no issue there. I’ve shown glimpses of what I can do; it’s just about getting the consistency back.

“I think the series was vital �

The centre of attention after some disappointing performances in the Autumn Internationals

24 / CLASSIC SPORTS SERIES