Jason Leonard: Enter the unlikely politician

Jason Leonard has a day job as a director of a firm supplying manpower and machines to the construction industry, and in his spare time he is stalking rugby's corridors of power. The former building-site chippie who won a world record number of caps in England's front row is difficult to edge past in any corridor, and if his already imposing girth has only grown since he retired from playing, so too has his influence on the game's tangled political affairs.

This would be wholly unexpected if you made the mistake of thinking that just because Leonard knows his way around a plank, he must be as thick as two short ones. He is a prime mover in a discussion group quietly emerging as the most promising contact between club and country. Moreover, in June 2006 he was elected to the Rugby Football Union council, whose members were once derided by Will Carling as "old farts". Leonard's language is less blunt. Though still expressed in his East London accent, he says he is the RFU's "conduit for the modern game".

Leonard is enjoying in these voluntary roles the respect and affection which were features of his long career with Saracens, Harlequins, England and the Lions. He replaced his fellow former England prop Jeff Probyn as a national representative on the council. Otherwise the members come mainly from the counties, but also from schools, universities, forces and other constituent bodies.

"No one expected me to be on the council," said Leonard, "and I must admit I did believe the meetings would consist of, 'Lovely, we're all done by midday and let's be off for a gin and tonic'. But I've been pleasantly surprised with the RFU, and how proactive they are for the good of the game. There's no quick fix to the problems; the only answer is to keep talking."

And there is a lot of talking going on, although not in a formal sense between the RFU and the Premiership clubs [PRL]. Their dialogue has ceased while an RFU project called "The Way Forward" - led by the chief executive, Francis Baron, and the elite rugby director, Rob Andrew - under-takes a review of the top end of the game. They have promised to analyse the success of countries such as Ireland and sports such as American football, which surely will tell them only what they already know about the benefits of central contracts and club franchises. At some stage they must re-establish contact with the clubs, and so it will go on.

Informally, however, Leonard is getting the warring parties together. Last Thursday evening he met with, among others, And-rew, Damian Hopley from the players' association and Premier Rugby's Mark McCafferty and Phil Winstanley.

This group is different to the RFU's Club England committee, which Leonard attends and will be co-opted on to next year - "I've got to be careful I don't put myself down for every committee, but it's better to help from the inside than the outside". Club England's powers are limited to making recommendations on the national team to the RFU management board.

"I want Rob Andrew and Damian Hopley to be on the management board," said Leonard. "They need to be able to do more than just make suggestions." Does he see an England vacancy still for a manager such as Harlequins' Dean Richards? "I can see it working as it is. But as the games unfold in the Six Nations, there might be a case for tinkering with stuff. There might not be. It's a work in progress."

There is another RFU review in which a "constitutional task group" is contemplating an overhaul of the union and the council, and which may recommend a separate board to run the professional game. And always in the background - potentially the most valuable chinwag - is the International Rugby Board's attempt to implement a global season.

Leonard assisted the IRB with the new law on engagement at the scrum, and he is the face of an RFU scheme, "Prop Idol", which encourages children to see the front row as a good, not a frightening, place to be.

"Even if we don't turn up a couple of Phil Vickerys or, god forbid, Jason Leonards, we've introduced more kids to the position. They can fill a void back at their clubs, and they'll love a great game for what it is." He was at Downing Street recently, joining Tony Blair among more than 100 newly created patrons of London sports clubs preparing for the 2012 Olympics.

And, uniquely and perhaps most wonderfully, he has "ambassadorial roles" with RBS (as in the Six Nations' sponsors) and JCB (as in diggers).

"All the other interests neatly dovetail into what, I suppose you can most probably say, makes up Jason Leonard - his reliability, dependability, durability, trustworthiness." And if he stopped mercifully short of saying "Jason Leonard plc", it is clear that anyone keeping this man's company is moving in the right circles. "I have not been measured up yet for an RFU blazer," Leonard added, reassuringly. "Maybe that's the last little bit of the player left in me."