The Melbourne Rebels are looking into an incident at a nightclub last weekend involving former England flyhalf Danny Cipriani, the Super rugby club said on Thursday.

Reuters

A report in the Herald Sun newspaper said the player was asked to leave a Melbourne nightclub at 04:00 last Saturday after the Rebels lost their Super rugby debut 43-0 to the Waratahs on Friday.

“We are looking into it and will speak to Danny on Thursday but we won’t be making any statement about it before the game,” a Rebels spokesperson said.

The Rebels play the Brumbies in their second Super rugby encounter in Melbourne.

Cipriani, who started the game on the bench before coming on as a replacement for the injured James Hilgendorf, has been named in the starting line-up for Friday’s clash.

The 23-year-old was a fixture in the social pages of the English newspapers with his celebrity model girlfriend Kelly Brook before leaving for Australia.

Cipriani made the move, he said, to escape the “negativity” surrounding him in England, where his international career had stalled after he fell out of favour with manager Martin Johnson.