David Ellis – “I can turn Danny Cipriani back into an England star”

Defence coach Dave Ellis says he can help Danny Cipriani get back into the England side.
Gifted Sale Sharks playmaker Cipriani has not represented his country for five years and while his attacking skills have never been in doubt, his defensive game has been repeatedly questioned.
Coaching consultant John Mitchell, who has since left Sale, hammered Cipriani’s defensive performance in the 62-0 Heineken Cup mauling at Toulon.
But Ellis, France defence coach for 12 years, told The Rugby Paper that Cipriani, 25, can still turn his game around sufficiently to be come in from the cold internationally.
He said: “Danny Cipriani is an individual-type player but if someone gets hold of him then he could make huge improvements.
“Stuart Lancaster is not going to select poor defenders and there’s no doubt if Danny does want to play for England again then he is going to have to put in a hell of a lot of hard work.
“Whether working with a team or with individuals I have shown I can help improve people and there are things I can do that would immediately improve his game. He needs to be given more responsibility and put in charge of the three-quarter line.
“You don’t have to be a great tackler to be a good defender. Some of the best defenders in the world have not been great tacklers but used people around them to make themselves into good defenders.”
The example Ellis uses is the equally mercurial French stand-off Ludovic Mercier who was at Gloucester when the Yorkshireman was the Cherry & Whites defence coach.
“When I was at Gloucester we had one of the worst tacklers in the game in Ludovic Mercier and he would be the first to admit that,” he added.
“In the early days we played against Saracens when Tim Horan was there and he missed 11 tackles in a single game. What we did was ensure that he was correctly aligned with his back row inside him and Henry Paul working with him on his outside.
“We turned that around because he needed to do that for his own career. He never became a great tackler but he turned himself into a pretty good defender.”
Cipriani is not the first Sale fly-half to be criticised for poor defence with Charlie Hodgson falling into that bracket for many years.
Yet, since moving to Saracens in 2011, Hodgson, 32, has shaken off that reputation, which Ellis believes indicates it is a problem with the structure rather than the individual.
“I think it is interesting that Sale do not have a defence coach and Saracens do have one in Paul Gustard,” said Ellis, who coached London Irish when they had the best defence in the Premiership four years ago.
“As soon as Charlie Hodgson came in they gave him responsibility defensively and to get chargedowns and look how he has responded.
“What happened against Bath a couple of weeks ago was very instructive. Bath targeted Charlie and on a number of occasions ran straight down his channel to force him into a tackle.
“But because he is part of a well-structured defensive system with a 12 and back rower tackling with him, they did not have any joy there.
“People have always said he is a weak defender but he has proven that in the right system he is more than capable of getting the job done.”
DANIEL SCHOFIELD