Cipriani, the schoolboy rugby wonder who ousted Jonny

He will make his full debut on Saturday against Ireland in a game that could save the job of coach Brian Ashton - who only last week dropped him because of a post-midnight visit to a nightclub.

Cipriani, 20, owes his rapid rise not only to Wilkinson's loss of form, but also to his mother. Anne Cipriani raised him single-handed on a housing estate in Putney after his father left to return to his native Trinidad when Danny was a young boy.

Working double shifts as a London cab driver, Mrs Cipriani saved up the money to pay the £5,000-a-year fees at the private school which introduced her son to rugby.

Within a year of starting at Donhead Catholic preparatory school in Wimbledon, Cipriani was showing his talent and in 1998, when these photos were taken, he was spotted by scouts from Rosslyn Park, the southwest London club.

Howard Parker, a businessman who helped run one of the club's youth teams, said: "We had been on a scouting mission and saw this lad playing for Donhead who did the most extraordinary thing. During a match against another school, he delivered a one-handed American football-style pass from one side of the pitch to the other.

"We didn't say anything. We knew we had to have him. We discovered who his mother was and made a beeline for her. Cipriani was in the bag."

Once signed, the boy stuck with Rosslyn Park - playing on windswept Wandsworth council pitches - despite advances from Queen's Park Rangers and Reading football clubs.

He won a scholarship to a boarding school near Reading but missed his mother so much he returned home within a year, switching to Whitgift School in Croydon. Cipriani, again on a scholarship, led Whitgift to victory in the Daily Mail U15 Cup at Twickenham. His teacher Chris Kibble describes how he asked Cipriani to punch his number into his mobile phone. It read: "Danny No 1 No 10". Tony Durrant, Cipriani's coach at Rosslyn Park, described him as "precocious". At 14 he used to preface sentences with "when I play for England".

He went to Premiership club Wasps at 15, where he joined the first team and last year helped them to become European champions. As a 16-year-old at Wasps his performances were labelled "cocksure".

According to friends who grew up playing rugby with him, Cipriani has always exuded arrogance born of his talent. One said: "If he didn't think another player was any good, he just wouldn't pass to them. Ever.

"Even when he was in the first XV at Whitgift he'd do his own warm-up if he didn't think much of the one the team were doing." His player profile for a programme for a tour to South Africa in 2000 said: "Danny is always up for action on and off the pitch. He just needs reminding from time to time it is actually a team game." As a 13-year-old at Rosslyn Park, he was once hauled before a kangaroo court when he blamed the ball after missing so many kicks in a match. "It was definitely too soft. I'm not backing down," he said.

Seconds later, his entire team wrestled him to the ground to administer the court's justice: a bucket of sand tipped down his pants.

Cipriani still lives with his mother, in a £1million home in Raynes Park. It is reported he dreads her reaction to tabloid tales of his sex life - he dated Monica Irimia, of Romanian pop duo the Cheeky Girls, then model Larissa Summers, who was born a man.

But right now Mrs Cipriani - who still drives a cab - must be very proud of her son.