CARY - There's no easy way to get to Malta from anywhere, and certainly not the Triangle. Martin Rennie flew from Raleigh to Newark to London to Malta last year on a one-day trip to see one player play one game.

The Carolina RailHawks coach left on a Thursday. He arrived in Malta on Friday, 18 hours later. The player picked him up at the airport, showed him around the island and left to play in the game that night.

In the middle of the game, the player picked up the ball at midfield, and Rennie, perhaps delusional from jet lag, made a pledge to himself: "If he scores from here, then I'm going to sign him."

Etienne Barbara went in and scored.

The next morning, Rennie was on his way home, but on that tiny island in the Mediterranean he found the player who would soon set every scoring record for the RailHawks.

"It was worth it," Rennie said.

Barbara, 28, scored a club-record eight goals during an injury-plagued first season with the RailHawks last year, but now he is showing what he can do when fully healthy. No team yet has been able to stop him from scoring, and he's far and away the NASL leader with 11 goals and three assists in only eight games.

Barbara scored twice in last Saturday's 3-0 win against Puerto Rico. Two weeks earlier, he set the franchise's career record with a goal in a win at Tampa Bay, the 14th of his RailHawks career, and between the two games he set up a goal and converted a penalty kick that he earned in a home win over Fort Lauderdale.

"When you're an offensive player, it's not how you play, it's the amount of goals you score," Barbara said. "I didn't find it last season so I'm trying to get it this season. I cannot do it unless my team plays good, and what's happening to now is of course thanks to them."

Making history

Thanks in part to all that offense, the RailHawks are 6-1-1, off to the best start in the five-year history of the team - and avenged last year's title-game loss to Puerto Rico with a win Saturday at WakeMed Soccer Park.

Barbara is in a position to make history as well. There's no record book in the NASL, a first-year league that arose from the ashes of the old USL First Division.

In last year's D2 Pro League, an interim league run by U.S. Soccer, the leading scorer, Portland's Ryan Pore, had 15 in 29 games. (Barbara was tied for ninth.) In the five previous years in the USL, no one scored more than 18.

"Who knows how many goals he would have gotten if he played six games in a row last season?" RailHawks defender Kupono Low said.

For Barbara, it has all been kind of a whirlwind. The idea of playing in America had not crossed his mind, yet it's hard to imagine it working out any better.

"Never. Ever. This Scottish guy called me up and said there's an opportunity to play in the United States," Barbara said. "I said, 'Are you seriously talking about that?' That's it, I'm here. It's really turned out to be really, really good."

The Maltese 'bull'

There's an obvious temptation to dub the guy "The Maltese Falcon," but it's a gross representation of the way he plays. Barbara is no falcon.

He's a bull, a big cat, strong on his feet, wide in the shoulders, determined on the ball and, for all that, no less fleet of foot.

With Rennie's first fleeting glances, he could see a player like Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United star who mixes deft skill with uncommon strength, not to mention a pugnacious temper.

Right now, Barbara has brought that kind of game, if not the same ill manners, to the RailHawks.

"He was a 100-meter sprinter when he was younger," Rennie said. "He's got great power, a low center of gravity and he's a great dribbler, but he's also a great finisher around the goal."

With every goal he scores, Barbara should be moving closer to a return to the Malta National Team. Barbara has played 30 times for Malta, scoring three goals, but has been frozen out for more than two years.

You'd think a team that has scored five goals and won just one of 16 games since his last appearance would be interested in bringing back an in-form scorer like Barbara.

Apparently not.

Barbara said a personality clash with coach John Buttigieg has kept him out of the picture.

"I was part of the national team for 10 years," Barbara said. "I always played for the national team. Three years ago was the first time that we have a Maltese coach. I used to play (rivalry games) against him and we got into conflicts as players. I was playing at a younger age and he was ending his career. But he turned up to be national-team coach."

There's some evidence supporting Barbara's claim: He scored 31 goals over two seasons for Maltese club Birkirkara before Buttigieg arrived as coach in 2007. Barbara was gone in less than three months.

All of his appearances for Malta came before Buttigieg was named coach of the national team in July 2009. Efforts to reach the Malta FA for comment were unsuccessful.

"There's a lot of good players in Malta if he's not in the national team, you know?" Rennie joked.

Having been to Malta, Rennie would know. You go that far to get a player, you expect big things. Barbara has delivered.