See Rupeni Caucaunibuca's greatest tries by clicking here

Rupeni Caucaunibuca. It is a name to stir the blood, and also to make the blood boil. I have encountered no significant opposition to the claim that Fiji’s Caucaunibuca is the greatest attacking player in rugby, perhaps the best of all time. Brian O’Driscoll and Mike Tindall, two unsentimental men, are on record as saying that he is the greatest player they have seen. Now, in the next few days, Leicester will decide whether to sign him. Easy choice? Read on. Caucau (for short) has whole tracts of the worldwide web to himself. You can find torrents of video clips of his great tries, for Fiji, Auckland Blues and Agen, and read endless debate as to which was the greatest. Was it one of the pair he scored against Scotland in the 2003 World Cup, or the steamer for the Blues against the Brumbies, or the devastation of Gloucester in the Heineken Cup in 2006, for Agen? Can you rank sublimity, as if it were pop records?

In all of them you see his burning pace, his incredible footwork, the ability to beat defenders in tight corners and to run with razor edges. Perhaps he has been within range of UK television cameras too infrequently to have evoked the same reverence here in which he is held in Fiji, New Zealand and France. So let me help. Imagine a much bigger version of Jason Robin-son (a player for whom I have complete respect); now imagine someone considerably faster, with roughly the same ability to beat the first man, someone smooth to Rob-inson’s staccato, but someone in an entirely different dimension as a runner and finisher from long or short range, a bewilderingly mesmeric genius. That is pure Caucau.

It is also pure Caucau that his arrival in Leicester for a trial, for the Tigers to gauge his state of body and mind, has become a saga already. He was not on the flight he was expected to catch, then there was a hitch with a visa, then there were reports that the British High Commission fixed matters on Wednesday. Who really knows? As Simon Raiwalui, one of Caucau’s long-suffering Fijian captains, says: “I was always just grateful when he turned up.”

Caucau, you see, is a magician, and also a nightmare; from most angles, he is an unreliable, ungrateful wastrel. Leicester might do well to remember that. Caucau signed a contract to play this season for Metro Racing in Paris. He never arrived, even though the club reportedly sent him two sets of nonrefundable air tickets for the Fiji-Paris flight. A fellow Fijian player, Sireli Bobo, took it upon himself to deliver Caucau. “I waited for him at Nadi airport [in Fiji] but he was nowhere to be seen. I personally sent him money, but he refused to appear. It is a disgrace to all Fijian players.”

It was all so familiar. Caucau has missed games because of foul play suspension, and because he tested positive at Agen for cannabis. He has been ejected from the Fiji squad for missing camps, and missed the 2007 World Cup altogether. He once missed a game in Samoa because his wife, so he said, had an infected tooth. He once tried to renege on Fiji and declared himself available for the All Blacks, only to find that IRB laws rendered him ineligible. He missed 2006 Pacific Islands tour games because he said he had lost his passport. Seemingly, he has missed more flights than he has made.

His career with Agen was too mixed to be called chequered. He was often wonderful, was named player of the French season for 2005-06, but in the subsequent season, he and Agen were relegated, a nonsense considering their elite squad. One of the most amazing aspects of the whole Caucau legend is that his brilliance against Gloucester in two Heineken Cup ties that season came just after one of his periodic disappearances, this time home to Fiji, so that when he played he was grossly overweight, shaped like a distended Toby jug – and yet he still played brilliantly.

Last season, Agen dispensed with him in mid-season. He has since played a few games for the Tailevu club in Fiji, but is not in the Pacific Islands squad to tour the UK this autumn. Ilie Tabua, the head coach of Fiji and of the Pacific team, sounded bone-weary of his man last week when he explained Caucau’s absence. Stopped caring, was Tabua’s gist.

Yet perhaps remarkably, the appeal remains. The NSW Waratahs have been chasing. So too the Tigers – the pragmatic, unsentimental, demanding Tigers. It might seem to be a marriage doomed way before consummation, because Caucau (like any other player at the stern Midlands giant) would only ever be one tantrum or infected tooth away from the sack.

How will he cope with a run of fierce training sessions this week where, as they will, the Tigers players relentlessly pick on him, searching for weaknesses of the spir-it? After a week of that, perhaps the flight back to sunny Fiji might be one that even Caucau would not miss.

But could this crazy gamble pay off? Well, the Tigers are without two superb wings: Alesana Tuilagi, who is injured, and Seru Rabeni, himself a wonderfully talented Fijian, whose suspension for rough play has been extended because he appeared in three sevens events during the suspension, no doubt hoping that an unmistakable, superb and giant Fijian with a vast crop of dreadlocks would not be recognised.

Yet Rabeni at least gives Caucau a friendly face and Leicester, for all their austere reputation, are a box-office dynamo. They need wings, need to entertain, and unless Caucau has lost something in a dramatically short time, he can be a sensation in England. And at this stage of his faltering career, and at 28, he may even come cheap.

Perhaps there is another side to Caucau that Leicester might consider. Two years ago, he disappeared from Agen. The grapevine held that he had gone home to Fiji.

A high-ranking official of the club, by all accounts pastoral as well as protective of his investment, set out to find him. The trip has passed into legend. There was a flight from Paris to Auckland, another to Nadi on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu and then another to an airstrip at Savusavu, on the less developed Vanua Levu. From there it took four hours by four-wheel drive, mostly on dirt roads and without signposts, with frequent navigation errors, and a final bounce down a track to a village marked on no maps, Caucau’s village.

There was no running water or electricity and the only buildings of note were the church and Caucau’s house. It appears that Caucau was genuinely ill. There was no medical facility within miles – when Caucau first arrived at Agen, the first priority had been extensive dental work.

Agen’s emissary was accompanied by Ian Borthwick, a journalist with L’Equipe. Borthwick says that when he appreciated the remoteness of Caucau’s village, the lack of comforts, he realised that a good deal of his unreliability was rooted in culture shock and sheer unfamiliarity. “His French and English were poor, so even to communicate well was a problem for him,” he said.

The arrogance of Caucau’s play may have hidden an inner discomfort. Perhaps it is no coincidence that his least unsettled period was that with Auckland, only three hours from Fiji. If Leicester decide that, physically, Caucau is up for the contract, they will need to care for him. They will need to bring over his family, to tie in his life with that of Rabeni, perhaps fly him home frequently in breaks in the season.

Too many people have felt let down too often by Caucau. Very few have been left disappointed after watching him play. How sumptuous for the Guinness Premiership to have him here. Leicester will need courage. How bold will they be?

RUPENI CAUCAUNIBUCA’S TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
October 2003 Incurs two-match ban at the World Cup for punching France flanker Olivier Magne

November 2003 Says he is quitting Fiji to become an All Black because they can pay him more. The IRB points out he is not eligible for New Zealand

June 2005 Fails to play for Fiji against New Zealand Maori, saying he was showing his recently-born daughter to family members in his home village

August 2005 Suspended for a year by the Fijian union for boycotting a World Cup qualifying game against Samoa. He refused to board the team plane, saying he had to return home to attend to his wife, who had toothache

October 2006 Misses Agen’s first 10 games of the season after returning late from Fiji. Attributed to a bout of typhoid and the birth of his second son

November 2006 Fails to show up for Pacific Islands’ match with Wales in Cardiff. Claims to have lost his passport

March 2007 Tests positive for cannabis after a French championship match for Agen. Banned for three months