"Please don't make it too embarrassing," said Tom Rock, when asked to describe Lesley Vainikolo's first try for Gloucester. "Three or four of us were hanging on, our full-back was lying on the ground and we were trying to bump him into touch when he went over," continued the Leeds wing. "Because he'd played league up here we knew what to expect. We had prepared a little and kept the lid on for nearly 40 minutes. We thought we were doing a good job but he is a handful.

"Ten yards out our full-back went high and finished up on his backside. I knew I had to go low and try and chop him off at the ankles but he just dragged me and the others over with him. It was a trademark Vainikolo score. Then he goes and gets another four."

In fact Rock, who weighs 13½st, had helped keep the "lid on" the 17½st Tongan wing for 36 minutes. Rock had also scored himself, so Leeds went in at the interval 16-13 up and with visions of a victory in their first game back in the Premiership in September. Unfortunately Vainikolo, who once ran 10.8sec for the 100m, shot those hopes to pieces, scoring in the 60th, 66th, 70th and 78th minutes - quite a debut.

It was a performance that echoed Jonah Lomu running through or over Tony Underwood, Will Carling and Mike Catt in the 1995 World Cup, only this time the big Tongan involved is qualified to play for England - or will be when the Six Nations comes around. Vainikolo has represented New Zealand and Tonga at rugby league, but a few decent performances in the Heineken Cup, starting tonight in Belfast, might raise eyebrows at Twickenham.

It is a long shot but Gloucester's head coach, Dean Ryan, clearly has no doubts about Vainikolo's ability. Despite a serious lack of game time, Ryan said 10 days ago that the Tongan would play at Ravenhill, that fortress of Ulster rugby where the Red Hand gang once went 14 European matches without defeat. In fact Vainikolo has played only 82 minutes of rugby since his debut on the opening day of the season at Leeds. In the next game against Saracens he lasted 57 minutes before doing serious damage to his neck while trapped at the bottom of a ruck.

"At first the hospital thought it was a fracture," said Vainikolo, whose neck had taken the weight of the pile of bodies on top of him. "They took a few scans but then I saw this doctor in London and he found it was a pulled ligament, although they did say they had never seen such a bad soft tissue neck injury and that I was only saved by the muscles in my neck. I walked off the field but couldn't hold my head up. I think it was the first time they had seen an injury like this."

In fact the injury was so bad that word swept around rugby league circles that Vainikolo's union career was over almost before it had started. He missed Gloucester's next five league and Anglo-Welsh Cup matches, returning to the match-day 22 only last Sunday against Wasps when a sore leg caused Mike Tindall to pull out at the last minute.

Vainikolo left the bench for the final 25 minutes at High Wycombe but did not see much of the ball. Not only were Wasps staging a remarkable second-half comeback but they had obviously done their homework on the 28-year-old whose remarkable record includes averaging nearly a try a game in 150 outings for Bradford Bulls after four seasons with the Canberra Raiders.

Forewarned, Wasps detailed a posse of players to haul him down every time the ball went anywhere near the left wing.

Tonight, however, Vainikolo says he is fit and ready to go, although he does admit that the injury saved him from having to make a difficult decision that would have shaped his future international career.

At the start of the World Cup, when injuries meant Tonga were short of wings, Vainikolo got a call from Epi Taione, once of Newcastle and Sale, asking whether Vainikolo was available to play for his native country. "It would have been nice, a big buzz for me, and an honour," said Vainikolo, who could reasonably have expected to play against England in their vital pool match at Parc des Princes.

Now, though, Vainikolo's name is being mentioned in connection with England. He has a three-year contract with Gloucester, who first tried to sign him two years ago, has bought a house in Cheltenham and he and his wife are expecting a baby in March - about the time England will be concluding their Six Nations campaign and starting to shape the squad that will take them through to the 2011 World Cup.

So would Vainikolo like to be involved? England's call would mean rewards unknown to all but those few Tongan players like Lomu who opted to play away from their cash-strapped islands. "I don't think about money. I think about pride and passion," Vainikolo replies." Everybody needs money but at the same time you have to be happy."

So is that a no? "All I want to do is play rugby to the highest level and, if England offered me, it would be nice and, if Tonga offered me, it would also be nice." As Leeds discovered, Vainikolo is not the easiest of men to knock off his stride.