John Terry paid a visit to the England rugby team's Bagshot training camp on Tuesday ahead of their Guinness Six Nations game against Wales this weekend.
Saturday's match between the sides in Cardiff is a Grand Slam eliminator.
The former England football captain gave a pep talk to the players.
"The players were really engaged by talking to him. He gave some great messages," England forwards coach Steve Borthwick told BBC.
He spoke about the traits in the highly successful teams he has been a part of, which are consistent with the type of thing we talk about: the competitiveness, the drive in training, players taking responsibility.
Those are the themes we discussed and that is what we want to drive here.
The former Chelsea centre-back, who retired from football in October, is currently an assistant coach with Aston Villa under manager Dean Smith.
"We spoke about the leadership density, and he spoke about the strength of that within the teams he has been part of," added Borthwick.
"All the successful teams have had a great group of leaders; that is something we are well aware of and continue to try and develop."
Winger Johnny May told the Daily Mail that Terry also spoke "a lot" about Frank Lampard and the leadership group they had at Chelsea.
"John’s a winner and a champion, isn’t he?" said May.
"He spoke about how Jose Mourinho came in and changed the way they train. They just went after it every day. Instead of just getting through training, it was about winning and being the best at training. That's sort of what Eddie [Jones] does here for us."
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