03 September 2023 , 10:13
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Danny Cipriani could have been a professional footballer, but chose rugby instead of joining Chelsea.
Cipriani made his name in rugby as a supremely talented fly-half with a bad boy image which kept him in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The 35-year-old has played for Wasps, Bath, Sale and Gloucester over the years and also earned 16 caps for England.
His career is often looked back upon as a what if story because his off-field issues often hindered his playing. However, his talent has never been in question – and Cipriani says that extended to other sports, with football and cricket on his horizon in his youth.
In an interview with The Times, he has discussed growing up in south-west London and choosing to follow a career in rugby via scholarships at Oratory boarding school in Reading and Whitgift in Croydon. His choice came at the expense of football, with Queens Park Rangers, Reading and Chelsea all interested in signing him to their academies.
Later down the line, when he was 23 and had spent four years playing professionally for Wasps, he came to another fork in the road. Cipriani considered signing for MK Dons, but instead opted to move to Australia to play rugby for the Melbourne Rebels.
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“I’m sure in a different realm I played football and I had a great career, and everyone said how great I was,” he said. “But that wouldn’t have served the part of me that needed to experience all this.”
Cipriani has enjoyed a decent career at club level, but he never cracked international rugby – due in large part to his behaviour. After being picked to play against Scotland, he was dropped after being photographed leaving a London nightclub just two days before the game. He was also charged with drink-driving in 2015 and was later arrested after an incident at a nightclub in Jersey.
Danny Cipriani won 16 caps for England (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)Cipriani is now without a club after being released by Bath at the end of his contract, and with a new book out, he is reflecting on his career. Asked to assess how many people view him he replied: “A rugby-playing kid who had everything at his feet and threw it away. I gave too many people too many excuses to write me off as a d***head.”
He added: “I’m this kid from a council estate and I came to rugby and the sport has not stopped talking about me since. So was I doing something wrong or was I revealing something that was wrong about it?”