Nick Easter may have been on the other side of the world for most of the past two months but he has enjoyed his club's dazzling start to the season as much as anyone. Then again, to watch Harlequins strut their stuff and yet be manacled all the while to his labouring England team-mates so far from home may have been a peculiar kind of torture – a world away, indeed.

"There wasn't much to do in New Zealand at certain times," Easter says, with the hint of a smile. "On a Saturday night, instead of seeing the sights or anything like that, the guys were in the analysis room downloading various Premiership games. I was only interested in the Quins ones. Best start we've ever had."

From a world away to just across the road it is unlikely Easter spent too much of his first game back at The Stoop gazing wistfully at the larger of Twickenham's two rugby stadiums. It is the junior organisation that has become the pride of English rugby, vibrant and unencumbered on and off the field, with silverware bagged from last season and an intention to bag some more clearly enunciated by their early-season form. Across the road at HQ, however, the story is one of turmoil and treachery, fear and failure, review and review and review. Nothing speaks so eloquently of a backward-looking organisation as this obsession with going over things.

"It's back to club rugby now," Easter says, no doubt with some relief. "I know as much about England's future as anyone else reading the papers. There are reviews here, reviews there. But that political stuff doesn't bother you as a player. International rugby is about the here and now, the next result. That's all it ever has been and all it ever will be. People are talking about four years' time, and, yeah, there's got to be planning, the right people and all that, but it is about the here and now. As a player that's all you focus on."

All the same the players have made it quite clear where they stand on who should take them to that World Cup in England in four years' time. Some have refused to take part in the latest review dreamed up by Martyn Thomas, the acting chief executive of the Rugby Football Union. That is the "independent" one to be conducted by Fran Cotton, who had earlier been highly critical of Martin Johnson's tenure as England manager and who is, like Thomas, a staunch ally of Sir Clive Woodward.

"Johnno's the man to take England on," says Easter, echoing what is said to be the feeling among the squad. "He knows English rugby, having played in it. Now he knows what it's like managing it. If you get someone else in, he's got to learn what it's like to be under pressure from the media, to deal with the clubs and the EPS [Elite Player Squad] agreement. He's got to get to know the players, because seeing them from afar is very different from up close. Johnno's done that now for three and a half years. There's a core group, a lot of youngsters who have come through under his watch. Like Clive Woodward in '99, that wasn't a great performance at all by England but they kept faith in him. To not have Johnno carry on, to get someone else in, you're back to square one.

"He's cut his teeth in international rugby. That decision [to throw him in with no experience] was taken. Now he's gone from nothing to having three and a half years' experience. And, people forget, we're Six Nations champions. We've had some good wins. There have been some lows, too, but international rugby is about fine lines. How you're seen by everyone else if you win by a point is remarkably different from how you're seen if you lose by a point."

New Zealand could tell us a bit about that, as could France, Wales, Australia, South Africa, Scotland and Argentina. It was a World Cup of close calls and high drama but the right team prevailed in the end. "New Zealand deserve to be the world champions," Easter says. "On the night France were the better team but New Zealand have been the best team for probably the last six or seven years. They went through the tournament unbeaten, which keeps up a very happy tradition in World Cups. The tournament's not devalued. If France had won, they would be champions having lost twice. In the end France and Wales came away with their heads held high but they still lost three games in a World Cup."

England did not lose as many but neither did they come away with their heads held high – far from it. They came home earlier than expected, unloved and unmissed, caught out on the field almost as much as they were off it. It had seemed at several turns over the previous 12 months that this squad were grasping the realities of international rugby with commendable ease. Suddenly that handle eluded them over five crazy weeks in New Zealand, of all places, which Easter describes as "a goldfish bowl within a goldfish bowl" for any rugby player on World Cup duty.

"In international rugby there's not always a next week. If you do lose a game, you're suddenly really scrutinised, whereas in club rugby you lose a game, then you can win the next two and the pressure is not on you so much. We were a tight group in the England squad but we got it wrong on the pitch. You can talk tactics all you like but we missed a lot of tackles and we couldn't catch and pass in the game against France. That's the sort of thing you teach your school kids. When you're a professional, let alone an international, that is going to come back to haunt you. Two soft tries was too much to make up, despite the chances we created at the end of the first half and the two we scored in the second. And that was it."

Whether that is it for Easter remains to be seen. He is 33 now but came to professional rugby at 26, so he feels there is plenty more mileage in him. He has announced his desire to continue playing for England and, if whoever ends up in charge of the national side wants a degree of continuity, he will surely take him up on it.

For now, though, Easter returns to club duties, with his team the new darlings of English rugby, intent on lowering the heads of those French and Welsh in the Heineken Cup, which starts next month. And so the merry-go-round continues. Soon English miseries in New Zealand will seem a world away.