Oh dear, he's back. Diego Dominguez has been a bit of a nuisance to Irish rugby teams of late, but then again, they're in good company.

He's something of a legend in his own playing career. With a record 650 points in his satchel from 46 Italian appearances, he is the most prolific international points scorer still active. And he is very much still active.

It's hard not to marvel at how Dominguez runs the show, seemingly weighing up three or four options with the ball in hand and invariably taking the right option.

At a slight 5ft 7in and just under 12 stone, Dominguez doesn't cut a particularly imposing figure. While most adept at launching runners off either shoulder, he scores a fair sprinkling of tries to decorate his smooth, metronomic place-kicking. He never seem ruffled. In the Italy-Ireland Bologna game just over a year ago, Dominguez utilised his blindside winger Paolo Vaccari with devastating effect through the gap where the Irish back row had gone AWOL. Then, suddenly, he showed the ball to Vaccari once more only to accelerate through a gap outside David Humprheys.

It was also Dominguez's try which signalled a three-try blitz in eight minutes. In his three games for Italy against Ireland - in May '95 in Treviso, at Lansdowne Road in January '97 and in Bologna - Dominguez contributed tallies of 17, 22 and 27 points respectively to winning margins of 22-12, 37-29 and 37-22.

Ominously, he lies in wait again this April and, conceivably, in a World Cup quarter-final play-off in Lens. Dominguez was on losing Milan sides against Leinster and Munster, but that was way back in his dim and distant past.

From Buenos Aires, rugby is in his blood and even his marriage, for his wife Soledad is a daughter of the club president at Cordoba where he learnt the game. Part of the University team which finished runners-up in the 1988 World Championship in France to New Zealand, Dominguez returned there with the Pumas a year later for a tour which shaped his career.

Embittered by not even being included on the Pumas' replacements bench, Dominguez decided to remain in France to pursue a professional rugby career. He played for one season at Cognac, where his coach Jacques Fouroux advised him to go to Italy.

As he said this week: "I have become what I am through Italy.

"At the beginning it was difficult, but I am Latin which maybe made it easier. I was a little bit afraid, but now I love the shirt and the country. Italy is everything to me because they gave me the opportunity to realise my targets."

When weighing up one last big career move before last season, Dominguez chose Stade Francais over Natal in part because it was close to Italy and also because the club's benefactor, Max Guazzini, is part Italian.

Besotted by rugby and an incredibly deep thinker about the game, Dominguez is credited with upping the club's professional approach. He is noted for turning up at training before everyone else and then staying on to practice his goal-kicking, where even occasional misses provoke self-admonishment.

Through force of personality, Dominguez has assumed the captaincy ahead of Vincent Moscato and other established French internationals at Stade de France. Their coach, Bernard Laporte, says: "he is the only star of the team."

Dominguez says that his sole objective is to realise the limits of his abilities, but he is undoubtedly Stade's key man, the orchestrator who has easily adapted to the ever-changing role of the out-half. "The position of the fly-half was never that important before. Now he is the key man in attack, but also in defence," says Dominguez.

Virtually since the final whistle at the end of their 71-14 quarterfinal victory (Dominguez chipped in with a couple of tries and 31 points), Stade Francais have been focusing on this match.

And losing doesn't come easily to Dominguez. "I hate losing even in the smallest games, even in card games. If I'm not there to win I'd rather stay at home with a book."

Rugby is assuredly a better game for having him. He turns 33 in April, but seems to be ageing like good wine.

Sadly, his retirement is not too far away. Fate has decreed that by the time Italy were granted access to the Five Nations table, Dominguez was in the latter stages of his career. He has targeted Italy's historic 2000 campaign in the Six Nations as a suitable time to exit.

"I have won a French championship, I would like to win a European Cup this year and also play in my third World Cup, and then play in the Six Nations with Italy. At that stage, I will have achieved all there is for me to achieve."

"I have become what I am through Italy.