Wallabies coach Eddie Jones has launched a scathing attack on former England player Danny Cipriani after he labelled Jones a “horny teenager” in his upcoming autobiography.
Jones said there is no truth to the claims that he asked Cipriani about his sex life while he was the coach of England, calling the allegations “totally absurd” and a “complete fabrication”.
Extracts from the former England playmaker’s upcoming autobiography, Who Am I?, were published in the UK media with Cipriani, who also spent time playing for the Melbourne Rebels, going into detail about an alleged dinner between the pair in 2016 when Jones was England coach.
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“We’re all out for dinner on day one, I’m sitting at the end of the table and Eddie comes and sits next to me,” Cipriani wrote.
“The first words out of his mouth are, ‘Mate, doesn’t (TV presenter) Kirsty Gallacher live around here? … What’s she like?’
“I’ve just split up with Kirsty, after a short relationship, and it’s not something I want to talk to my head coach about, or anyone else for that matter.
“Eddie keeps pecking, like a horny teenager, and in the end I tell him straight, ‘Eddie, I don’t want to talk about this, it’s making me uncomfortable’.
“Surprise, surprise, I’m not in the squad for the summer international against Wales. He’s picked a part-time No.10 ahead of me. I can’t help thinking Eddie only picked me for that training camp as a joke.”
Jones, who is in France preparing for the upcoming Rugby World Cup, told the Daily Mail that he believes Cipriani is using the allegation to generate publicity for his book.
“We didn’t have a close relationship, so I’m hardly going to engage in a conversation like that with him,” Jones said.
“To be quite frank, it’s a complete fabrication. We didn’t select him. When players don’t get selected, they always have an axe to grind. We know that.
“He’s selling a book, so nothing surprises me when players want to sell books. It’s absurd. It’s almost too absurd to talk about.
“I think it’s very sad for him that he feels he has to make something up to sell his book.”
Meanwhile, the Wallabies open their tournament with a pool game against Georgia on Sunday (AEST) in Paris where they will look to end a five-game losing streak and stamp themselves as genuine title contenders.
Since replacing Dave Rennie as coach, Jones has talked about playing the “Wallaby way” and assistant coach Jason Ryles said that meant changing the attack to suit the players.
The former Melbourne Storm player and assistant, who worked under Jones when he was England coach, was a late replacement for the Wallabies after Brad Davis quit the post just before the squad flew to Europe.
Having observed training and the Wallabies’ 41-17 loss to France in their final warm-up match, Ryles said he could see shifts in the attack.
“I definitely think it’s improving – it was four tries to three (against France) and we could have had another one or two had the bounce of the ball gone our way,” said Ryles, who will return to the Storm post-World Cup.
“It’s heading in the right direction and it’s a Wallabies style. What I’ve picked up really quickly is that it’s less structured, it’s more about playing to the players’ strengths and then building the game plan in and around that.”
Ryles, who ended his 249-game NRL playing career with Melbourne in 2013, held up a rough patch of five successive losses through the club’s title-winning 2012 season as proof of how quickly fortunes can change.
“It was basically one game … but it broke that drought of not winning,” he said.
“Sometimes it takes that game and the confidence and belief builds and you turn that corner, and then you turn one win into two, into three.”
The Wallabies may be without Samu Kerevi for the Georgia match, with the strike centre only just resuming training following his broken hand, while props James Slipper (foot) and Pone Fa’amausili (calf) remain sidelined.
– With AAP.
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