Cipriani in trouble again

The 23-year-old and team mate Richard Kingi agreed to the punishment after a meeting of the Super rugby team's "player's standards group" found them guilty of failing to uphold an agreement not to stay out late after a match last weekend.

"Both players defied a team directive to abstain from staying out late on Saturday night, given the six day break ahead of our next game," Rebels chief Ross Oakley said in a news release.

Cipriani was fined a match payment for a breach of discipline in March after being ejected from a Melbourne nightclub for taking a bottle of vodka from a bar without paying.

"If anything else happens along these lines again, I have agreed with the players that I will stand down for an appropriate period of time," Cipriani said at the time.

Cipriani was a fixture in the social pages of the English newspapers with his celebrity model girlfriend Kelly Brook before leaving for Australia.

He 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.

Even if his breach with Johnson is not founded in his lifestyle, as has been reported in Britain, this latest incident will not aid his cause as he looks for a return to the England fold for this year's World Cup.

He started last Saturday's defeat to the New South Wales Waratahs in Sydney on the bench after mixing moments of brilliance with some ordinary performances in the Rebels' inuagural season in Super rugby.

The Rebels have signed Kurtley Beale for next season and have also been linked with a move for his fellow Wallabies back James O'Connor.

Both can play at fly-half which has fuelled speculation that Cipriani might be on his way back to Europe at the end of the season, despite the Englishman saying he wanted to see out his two-year deal.