His uncle was a legendary All Black, but Nicky Little has embraced Fijian rugby's sense of adventure and spirit even if, as an outhalf, he sometimes has to call a halt to the fun, writes Keith Duggan

Uncle Walter was his ticket to schoolyard celebrity. He was among the toughest and sleekest of the All-Blacks at a time in the 1980s when the Maori rugby mystique was at its most powerful. His friends would watch New Zealand steamroll some nation or other and point at fearsome Walter on the television saying, "Wow, Nicky, that's your uncle."

"Of course he was my idol, yeah," says Nicky Little. "And I had loads of questions I wanted to ask him, but next thing he'd turn up and you know, he'd just be the babysitter. You'd end up having a pillow fight with him. Or fetching his shoes or whatever. You know how it is with family."

One of Nicky Little's earliest realisations was that the famous black shirt was a life aim worth pursuing. His father Frank used to quietly guide his juvenile awe towards his native Fiji, but at the age of five, he had decided on being an All Black.

Then, in keeping with a restless family gene that dates back at least to the ancient Little fishermen from Scotland who fancied a whaling adventure, Nicky found himself on the move.

His parents split and he moved to Perth with his mother Wendy. It was there that he realised that his uncle was a folk hero. It was there that he learned the rudiments of rugby and it was also there that he began to understand that he may not follow his uncle as an All Black. By the time he was 12, his mother had remarried and the family were ready to return to New Zealand.

"She married another Kiwi. He is part Irish, actually. Name of Muckles. So we moved back and my Dad had also started a family with his new wife and that's how it turned out. . ."

Nicky Little, all-time leading Fijian scorer with over 400 points, is in fine form. He is laughing at this abbreviated history of his family. Nothing can dampen his enthusiasm, not the Biblical flood threatening to submerge Dublin, nor the bug he picked up midweek, nor the thought of the squelching, muddy Lansdowne Road field that awaits him.

"The thing is, playing with Fiji, I never go stale. We play rugby for virtually 12 months of the year now, but meeting up with these boys is like an escape. The difference here is that we are always laughing. All these boys are playing with Fiji because they love it. And there are no egos. It is just a special feeling. We poke fun at each other, respect each other, and when we go out on the field, you know that people are there for the right reasons. No one is getting paid for it. We are just out there to express ourselves."

By the time he reached his teenage years, Little's Fijian heritage had begun to fascinate him. His grandfather Edward had played in some of the earliest club leagues that had sprung up across the islands in the 1930s and 40s. Fiji's reputation at the oval ball game at that time was both fledgling and stunning.

The first ever international was held in 1924, against the Samoans. Kick-off was at 7 a.m. so the visitors could make it to work on time and, famously, a large tree marked the centre point of the half-way line. The Fijians wore no boots, nor would they until 1938. Many of the players found them nothing more than a hindrance on the sun-baked earth.

A year later, Fiji toured New Zealand and enjoyed a record seven wins and one draw.

"Almost uncanny in handling the ball, lightning in pace and of their sprinting, relentless in their dive tackling, the Fijians gave a sparkling display," declared the enraptured Waikato Times of the day.

A few years later, Edward Little moved with many of the Cook Islanders to take up well-paid work in the paper mills of New Zealand, but the family kept Fijian traditions alive through cooking, culture and language. By his mid-teens, Nicky English identified the traditional Fijian joy for life as being the source of adventure and spirit that distinguished the national rugby style at a time when the game had become leaden with plays and tactics.

Put simply, he fell for it. Although a serious and talented rugby player at Hamilton university, he had reconciled himself to the fact that he wasn't going to play All Black rugby.

In 1996, aged 19, he made his debut against the Springboks and, six years on, wants to keep playing for Fiji until his body calls a halt. Over the half decade, his values have been finely and delicately planed so that they are almost unrecognisable from those of the outhalves he meets at international venues across the globe.

YES, HE wants to win and loathes the hollow post-match sensation that follows a loss as much as any team athlete. But it has never been about victory at all costs for the Fijians.

"You could go to Afghanistan and find that Fiji rugby means something. It's just a type of game that hopefully people enjoy watching. Of course it all comes from the sevens game, where there is no substitute for just running and running. I'm not as flairy or flashy as a lot of the guys we have, you know."

But that is not Nicky's role. At outhalf, he has to instill some organisation, orchestrate some game plan. Occasionally that means calling a halt to the fun.

"Sometimes," he says, lowering his voice as if speaking a heresy, "it maybe gets too much. At sevens you can run free, but against 15, when it gets congested, sometimes you have to kick for the corners and play that kind of game. That's what was so terrible about Wales. We played into their hands and didn't change it. It was the way we lost. Of course, at the same time, I'd love to be running like some or our backs but . . . I can't."

Instead, he has to content himself with being the Grant Fox of Fiji, the place-kicker supreme. Little throws his eyes to heaven as the mention of his 10 for 10 penalty strikes against Italy.

"Tell ya mate, wish they were conversions. That would have been something. Ah, penalties are okay, I suppose. Whatever."

His discipline and skill facilitated a move to Sale after he turned professional in 1999 and he is now with Saracens.

"The biggest difference in moving to England was just the stuff at hand. I don't mean all the flashy stuff - clothes and cars and what not - but just the team doctors and physios and that kind of thing. It was great to have that support network behind me."

The transition to professionalism has also helped him maintain his love affair with Fijian rugby. When he started out, most of the national boys still lived in the villages, farming for a living. Now, half the squad is professional and they pay their fares for Test tours such as this.

"It's great to have all the boys coming up to see those of us based in England and wherever. And when we go to Fiji, we pay our way down. People ask why we bother and I just say, you have no idea, you don't want to know. It's a personal thing and I wouldn't give this up for anything."

Part of it is what he sees whenever he returns to the islands. A lifestyle that has changed little from when his grandfather lived there and this incredible warmth and gratitude.

"I know some people will be walking 10 miles to the nearest television to see us playing here in Ireland. And when we go there, it does me good just to stick my head into some of the villages and see how rich they are with so little. I'm always telling the boys at Saracens about it. We come in with a strained leg as if the world is ending and I just shake my head and say, 'mate, things aren't so bad, you know'."

Slowly but surely his native Fijian team-mates are teaching him to speak his grandfather's language having already mastered Maori, his mother's tongue.

"I went to university with the intentionof teaching Maori, but now that my world has become a little bigger, maybe not. It's kind of cool for people to speak it now anyhow. That was never the motivation for me. I just wanted to understand more about my background. Being Maori isn't really a physical thing any more, you don't have to wear the green stone earrings or whatever. It's just about knowing where you come from. So now, I'm trying to understand both sides of my bloodlines."

And to demonstrate an interpretation of rugby that is loyal to both. Lansdowne Road, expectant and damp in deep November, will be everything that Fiji rugby isn't. Which is why Little relishes the prospect. In the imagination of his youth, Northern Hemisphere rugby just meant a jumbled mass of muddy ogres of men steaming towards him, murder in their eyes.

"Big tough boys who loved to ruck you. And you'd be thinking, boring rugby but gee, they are 20 points up because they are doing it right. And we have all these flashy runs but no scores. There is still a bit of that. But now we see the Irish backs running in these beautiful tries and we have to look at ourselves and say, who are we? What do we know?"

The outhalf, the tactician in Little admits that he would take six penalties and a win over four gorgeous tries and a loss.

"Win's a win, right? We are touring these countries trying to learn that. But four tries and a win, that would be all right."

The main thing is, though, that they play gold standard Fijian rugby. Right now, he is the last of the international rugby playing Littles. Laurence, his other uncle who preceded him onto the Fijian team, packed it in a few years ago.

And his idol?

"He's in Japan, mate," laughs the nephew. "Raking it in. Plays maybe two games a year. Hi, I'm Walter Little."

And he pulls the handle of an imaginary slot machine so the silver can gush out. He finds it hilarious.

Fiji conclude their carnival tour of the Celtic Isles in Scotland. That is fitting. Centuries ago, Little's antecedents went whaling, happened upon Fiji, took a look at the women and the sunshine, thought about the mists of home and stayed.

"You know how it is mate. Bit o' this, bit o' that. It's a big racial fruit salad down there They liked it so they stayed."

It is the Little way. England is treating Nicky well and it may become home. Time will tell. For now, he is happiest keeping the Fiji faith, roaming the famed corridors of world rugby, thrilling the crowds and just sometimes, in a very blue moon, kicking for touch. His Fijian team-mates allow him caution as long as he doesn't favour it too often. Anyhow, he can always blame the Scots blood in him.