Jason Leonard will ‘clap harder than anyone’ when Ben Youngs breaks cap record

Jason Leonard will be Ben Youngs’ loudest cheerleader at Twickenham on Saturday as he urges the England scrum-half to savour a landmark achievement.

Youngs, 32, will surpass Leonard to becomes the country’s most capped male player when he steps off the bench and makes his 115th appearance in the Guinness Six Nations clash with Wales.

The Leicester scrum-half will reach the milestone in front of a 82,000 sell-out crowd 12 years after running on for his debut against Scotland.

Former Lions prop Leonard, who retains close ties with the game as an administrator and speaker having retired in 2004, feels only warmth for his successor in waiting as England’s most enduring player.

“I’ll be at Twickenham and I’ll be clapping harder than anyone in the West Stand when Ben comes on. It will be a great achievement,” Leonard told the PA news agency.

“To do it in front of a home crowd is amazing and I’m pretty sure that Twickenham will go absolutely nuts in celebration – and rightly so.

“I know Ben and his brother Tom, and their old man Nick, who used to play scrum-half for England himself back in the day. So I know the family and a nicer guy than Ben you couldn’t wish for.

I'll be at Twickenham and I'll be clapping harder than anyone in the West Stand when Ben comes on. It will be a great achievement.- Jason Leonard

“A record is there to be broken. Never, ever, did I think that this would be here for all eternity. It was always a case that it’s going to happen, so the question was when really.

“Ben has been such a great international player for over a decade now and he’s an absolute credit to the game, his club, his country, his family and his friends.

“The scary but positive thing is that he’s still got two or three years of rugby