'I've been dying to get picked since I was so young'
Wasps' fly-half has been through the tabloid mill but hopes an England call-up will repay his mum's faith. You can listen to audio extracts of this interview here
By: Donald McRae (The Guardian)
Tuesday January 8, 2008
Danny Cipriani is targeting an England call-up. Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian
A black taxi should weave through the clogged streets of London with a little more zip than usual tomorrow afternoon as Anne Cipriani shares the news of England's Six Nations squad with her passengers. Within hours, the cab-driver and mother of the next great star of English rugby will have told a stream of commuters about Danny Cipriani's dazzling talent and intriguing story.
Cipriani, who has just turned 20 and only been Wasps' first-choice fly-half for the past two months, making a mere nine starts in a key play-making role, cannot expect to be more than an understudy to Jonny Wilkinson. Yet his outstanding form at No10, having played at full-back last season, means that his exclusion tomorrow would be a major surprise.
"If I did get picked for England it would be my greatest achievement," Cipriani says passionately. "It's what I've been dying to do since I was so young. I'd relish it but, right now, I just don't know [if Brian Ashton will select him]."
He is more convinced of his mother's proud reaction should his rise as an only child from a single-parent family on an estate in south-west London to the heart of English rugby be confirmed. "Her favourite player is Lawrence [Dallaglio] but I'm trying to change that," he jokes.
Cipriani should soon become as essential to England as Dallaglio was for so many years - a fact that will thrill his mum. "She always talks about me to whoever's in the back of the cab and I'm like: 'Mum, just shut up, please, leave it alone!' But then I get some random friend saying: 'Oh my mate had a taxi ride and it was with your mum and she was just telling him how good you were at rugby. And I'm like: 'Aw no, mum, please!'"
Even her famous passengers can expect a sustained ear-bashing. "Yeah, that's the problem," he blushes as he mentions a few celebs who have heard about him in the back of her taxi. "Anthea Turner . . . Will Carling. When I was about 15 she was told by this man, a passenger, that I should train with Margot Wells [the wife of the former Olympic 100m champion Allan Wells]. And I said: 'Mum, I haven't got enough time.' But I wanted to add another dimension to my game and get quicker and so I ended up following her tip."
Cipriani's pace is welded to boldness in a composed all-round game that only lacks experience and the defensive grit of Wilkinson. He might not be quite ready to match the World Cup-winning fly-half's metronomic boot - but even Wilkinson today cannot equal his past perfection as a kicker. Cipriani, however, brings a verve and imagination that could eventually displace Wilkinson at the hub of an England team in desperate need of creativity.
Christian Cullen, the former All Black full-back who used to slash through the opposition with devastating speed and skill, remains Cipriani's rugby idol but he stresses: "Jonny has always been a hero of mine. Cullen was the guy I watched all the time because that's the way I like to play but Wilkinson regenerated rugby on his own. It was amazing to work with him before the World Cup. We did extra sessions after training and his intensity rubs off on you. If I bring something to the table that is anywhere near what he has done it would be a great achievement. I'd love to get a chance to play but obviously the best player at the time must get picked and if that's Jonny then fair enough. I just love learning from him."
Cipriani's first-half performance against Clermont Auvergne last month - when he repeatedly shredded the French defence - showed how much more inventive he is than Wilkinson. He has also used his disappointment at missing out on Ashton's final World Cup squad to strengthen both his work-ethic and ambition.
"I was obviously disappointed because it was my goal since I was 15 to get to that World Cup but I was soon back training to get quicker and sharper and more powerful. I've got so much respect for Brian and he's been one of the major influences on my career - along with Shaun Edwards, Warren Gatland and Ian McGeechan. I'm very fortunate because those are four of the best coaches in world rugby.
"The way Shaun coaches me at Wasps is 'try whatever you want but do it with discipline and know when to do it'. You can't have all this talent but spoil it with bad decision-making. You also need to remember that your bread-and-butter is on the training field. You've got to keep working. So after training I go directly to working with Margot. I don't want to leave anything to chance."
Such resolve explains why his mother is compiling an expanding scrapbook of glowing cuttings but Cipriani focuses more sweetly on all she has done for him since their early life together on the Lockyer Estate in Putney. His father, Jay, separated from Anne soon after his birth and returned to Trinidad & Tobago. While he has remained in contact with his dad, and is amused to point out that he and his mother are the only white members of an extended Caribbean family, Cipriani insists: "My mum's been amazing because she's worked so hard to provide for me. I'm not trying to make this sound like a sob-story but she wanted me to have these opportunities.
"When I used to be in school at Wimbledon she'd leave for work before I got up and then come home and prepare my dinner at around four and then go back out again. She used to work ridiculous hours. I was around 10 at that stage and had to go to boarding school for two years. But she didn't send me to any old school. She sent me to Oratory near Reading. I may have had scholarships but it's still a lot of money for a single mother to send her son to a public school where they play such good rugby, football and cricket. I love her for that."
Cipriani played junior football for Queens Park Rangers and was offered youth terms by Reading - as well as being picked as a schoolboy cricketer for Berkshire and Oxfordshire before being invited to join Surrey's academy as a dashing batsman. "I loved batting and scoring goals - all the glamour roles - but to me there's nothing like rugby. It's just the way you're free-flowing and get to run with the ball. There's such a buzz about rugby."
His mother initially wanted him to go to university. "She still does," Cipriani concedes. "She wanted me to go to medical school and become a doctor but I'm too grossed out. I can't do any gory scenes. That's not me."
Cipriani could, instead, become one of the great healers of English rugby. For all the unexpected success in overturning a 36-0 hammering against South Africa in a World Cup group match last September to make the final against the same team six weeks later, England are still emerging from a long period of turmoil. While it may be another year or two before Cipriani starts fulfilling all the grandiose predictions that have been made for him as a future England great, the tabloids have already begun to relish his emergence.
After the Sun claimed wrongly that he was sleeping with one of the Cheeky Girls, Cipriani was more embarrassed when the News of the World revealed that a woman with whom he had been engaged in a brief romp had started life as a man. "The 20-year-old fly-half had no idea that, before her sex-swap op, the stunner had very different tackle," the newspaper chortled.
Cipriani has somehow managed to put up with the dressing room quips. "It could be true, but it might not be," he sighs. "I dunno. There's always going to be rubbish written about you. I don't really care about it. I just don't want my mum to read it. I don't want her to be upset. But I'm fine now and she's cool."
Cipriani is as gifted and decent a son as Anne might have wished for during those long nights out on the road. "It was unusual for her to become a London black cab driver and it was hard. There were times when she got attacked and I didn't want her to do it. Once, when I was younger, an attack happened and she was a bit shaken up. She phoned me up and I had to pick her up - but she's all right now. She's not having to work as hard but she's still out there. Hopefully one day I can relieve her of that. But I've got to become as rich as Lawrence [Dallaglio] first!"
Even more than making the England squad tomorrow, and becoming their eventual inspiration, Cipriani sounds achingly sincere when he says: "I just want to make her happy and help her work not so many hours. She likes to look at the papers and keep a scrapbook so she can show my kids and her grandkids one day. But she knows I'm going to stay down-to-earth and level-headed. I'm going to stand by that for the rest of my life."
Listen to audio extracts of this interview here.
