The fly-half, who started at No 10 in England’s last Test against South Africa in Cape Town, spent last night behind bars after an incident during Gloucester’s pre-season training trip to St Helier.
Jersey police said the 30-year-old has been charged with common assault, larceny, assault on police, resisting arrest and being disorderly on licensed premises after an incident in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
England head coach Eddie Jones is a strict disciplinarian and will not take this news lightly, leaving Cipriani’s Test career hanging by a thread.
Cipriani has fought tooth and nail to get back into the international arena but that could all be scuppered.
Jones took Cipriani on the summer tour to South Africa and picked him in the run-on XV ahead of George Ford for the game at Newlands which England won 25-10.
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Having been urged to pick him since taking over in December 2015, it would be no surprise if Jones turned the light out on Cipriani’s England involvement.
Cipriani is due at Jersey Magistrates’ Court this morning with Gloucester and the RFU remaining tight-lipped on the circumstances.
The mercurial No.10 joined Gloucester after his summer move from Wasps in a bid to keep his World Cup ambitions for next year alive.
He could have moved abroad but that would have disqualified him from playing for England.
Cipriani has won just 16 caps in a decade of international rugby career that was nearly suffocated at birth.
As a 20-year-old in 2008 he made his first start for England – ahead of Jonny Wilkinson – and scored 18 points in a 33-10 Twickenham win.
But a gruesome ankle injury playing for Wasps against Bath ruled him out of that year’s summer tour to New Zealand and he managed just three starts in the next 10 years.
He had stints with Melbourne Rebels and Sale before returning to Wasps in 2016, then moving to Gloucester this summer when he could easily have cashed in and sacrificed his international ambitions. He might have now.