The phone line from Buenos Aires is slightly crackly but Gus Pichot’s opinions are crystal clear. “The Fiji v England game last Saturday wasn’t very good for rugby. Having a Fijian saying he was better leaving Fiji to play for England … I don’t like that. I think it’s unfair for other teams.” In his days as Argentina’s captain, Pichot was among the most passionate and honest of leaders and, praise be, rugby administration has not changed him.

At this vital juncture in the professional game’s evolution, the 42-year-old vice-chairman of World Rugby represents perhaps the single best hope of negotiating a path across the familiar minefield of global calendar, eligibility and player welfare problems.

To label Pichot and the new chairman, Bill Beaumont, as the Ant and Dec of oval-ball diplomacy might be stretching it physically but theirs is no mediocre double act. If this persuasive pair cannot politely twist a few arms no one will.

That, at least, is Pichot’s stated mission. Too often rugby’s rulers have clung selfishly to the status quo, reluctant to give up so much as a paper clip to the traditionally weaker nations.

Now, with no international fixtures in the diary beyond 2019 and with the professional club game in England and France draining the southern hemisphere of leading players, the sport has far-reaching decisions to make and limited margin for error.

On Friday, for example, a source within Premiership Rugby suggested the English clubs were “frustrated and surprised” at the failure to gather all parties around the same table this autumn to hammer out a workable deal. It would be a noisy old summit, a veritable Tower of Babel, particularly if and when Pichot, capped 71 times by Argentina, lectures the assembled chief executives on why money is only part of the solution.

“When I started playing professionally my father didn’t like it at all,” he says. “He was very amateur and didn’t want money in the game. But in Argentina we understood very quickly. Money is not the be-all and end-all. People shouldn’t be playing rugby just to be rich. They should be playing because they love it.

“We are not just here to make a £10m profit at Twickenham this Saturday. What do we do with all that money? Put it in a bank or help grow the game everywhere, not just in England? That’s the tricky part.”

Pichot takes some stopping once he gets going. He was particularly heartened last week to hear Lawrence Dallaglio, Brian O’Driscoll, Jeremy Guscott and Keith Wood felt similarly when they shared a train up to their induction into World Rugby’s Hall of Fame.

“We all spoke the same language,” says Pichot. “It’s about giving, because rugby has given so much to all of us. I think that’s something we can’t lose.”

It is precisely this spirit of brotherhood that Pichot is now looking to bottle. Shrewdly, he has also been talking to former adversaries in Australia and New Zealand – the ex-Wallaby captain John Eales prominent among them – to try and filter the message upwards to worried executives.

“Ultimately it is about organising the professional game. Then we can use that revenue to grow the game.”

But what if some have different agendas? “It’s like a rugby team. If people don’t want to follow the big objective then, even though they’re good, they have to be on the bench. It’s about producing what’s best for the whole game. That’s very important.”

Pichot is under few illusions about the scale of that task – “You have to play the waiting game in World Rugby” – and is certainly not in it for personal gain. “I was elected to make things better, not just to cruise along and float in the system. I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t like going away from my family, I don’t need the money and I don’t need to be in a Royal Box this weekend. I don’t enjoy that.”

What drives him, instead, is the greater good.

“We have a brilliant, beautiful game that I’m passionate about. It can’t just be on a Monday morning before Fiji play England that people start asking: ‘What is going on in Fiji?’ Bill and I were in Fiji six months ago to find a solution. It’s not easy but at least it’s on the agenda now. Before it wasn’t. It’s the same with the global calendar. I’m not sure we’re going to find a magical solution but at least we’re trying.”

A scrapping of summer tours immediately after World Cups and a slight reshuffle of domestic seasons will probably come to pass but Pichot also confirms further talks are scheduled for mid-January about assisting the Pacific Island nations: “We’re not just here to see if we can have a revenue share from England for Fiji on a Saturday once a year. That’s not going to make the system work.”

Agustin Pichot made 71 appearances for Argentina, who face England at Twickenham on Saturday. Photograph: Tom Hevezi/AP

Nor, in his view, does the idea of players switching Test allegiance once their Tier One days are done: “I don’t think that’s the solution. A player should not be playing for one country to make money and then coming back because the All Blacks aren’t selecting him any more.”

He does not regard Nathan Hughes’s selection for England via three years’ residency as beneficial either. “That’s not right. He should be able to make good money playing club rugby in England but still play for Fiji.”

Like many others he also winced at several of the tackles in Dublin last weekend.

“It’s wrong … just hitting players like that is very dangerous, we have to start educating players not to do it any more.”

Endlessly banging his own head against a bureaucratic wall of indifference holds equally little appeal. “I like fighting for what I think is right. If in three to four years people don’t listen I’ll be very happy back in my house with my family again. I’ve captained my country, I played for some of the best clubs in Europe, I won leagues, I played in Rugby World Cups. I’ve achieved everything I wanted to. If people want to work together, we’ll do it. If it’s simply about [arguing over] a commercial entity, I’ll go back home.”

The fight to preserve rugby’s soul could not be in better hands.