England legend Nick Easter is celebrating leading village minnows Chinnor to Championship promotion... all while coaching the USA national team!

Nick Easter is midway through his conversation with Mail Sport when the former England No 8’s phone starts ringing. The logical assumption is our chat will temporarily be put on hold.

Chinnor president Simon Vickers is on the line, wanting to talk about the signing of new players for next season now the men known as ‘The Villagers’ will be playing in the Championship – the tier below the Gallagher Premiership – in 2024/25. Chinnor is an ambitious club on the up. Easter is the man in charge and is talking through his side’s National One promotion success.

‘Don’t worry, it’s not a scheduled call so we’ll ignore it,’ he says with a smile, pressing red instead of green and continuing the discussion. Easter, now 45, is a man used to being in demand.

He is constantly busy as he balances trying to lead Chinnor up the English rugby pyramid alongside coaching with the USA ahead of them hosting the 2031 World Cup.

‘Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day,’ Easter says. ‘But I love being busy. I loved my playing career and I’ve loved going into coaching. I’ve never lost my passion for the game.

‘After we won promotion at Moseley last weekend it was a bit of a late finish. The lads celebrated hard and I joined them! I think I went to bed at 3am but I did miss the Sunday session.

‘I had to go to my in-laws for my nephew’s first birthday. I raised a glass a glass of champagne there instead!’

A powerful carrier in his playing career who won 54 England caps and made 281 appearances for Harlequins, Easter immediately moved into a coaching career with the London club on retirement.

In 2022, he was working at Worcester when the Warriors became the first of three now former Premiership clubs to enter financial oblivion. Like everyone at Sixways, Easter lost his job on the spot.

So, where to turn? National One side Chinnor, who compete in English rugby’s third tier, might not have seemed the most obvious location. But it was where Easter headed as director of rugby.

Last weekend, the Thame-based club hammered Moseley 52-0 to seal the league title and a place in the Championship for next term. Easter has led a remarkable turnaround.

‘You can’t always hark back to the past but I do sometimes wonder what might have been if we’d been allowed to continue under Steve Diamond at Worcester,’ Easter says.

‘We were going the right way and had some good young players combined with some experienced ones. With another season of recruitment, you don’t know what would have happened.

‘Now, the coaches we had at Worcester are all over the place. Dimes is at Newcastle, I’m with Chinnor and the USA, and Stevie Scott is at Bath.’

Easter, who lit up a celebratory cigar to go with his champagne after Chinnor’s latest win, continues: ‘I joined Chinnor on December 1, 2022 and I’ve really enjoyed it.

‘Since Worcester I’d done a little bit of coaching at Cheltenham College and a few masterclasses, but it was great for me to get back coaching again regularly and at a good level.

‘Chinnor are part time but when I joined it was an attractive proposition because they’d won two games from 11. I took over as director of rugby and had to learn new skills.

‘It wasn’t all down to me but I soon realised I was the man in charge of the ship and if it went down, I’d have known it was down to me and my methods! The buck stops with me.

‘It was a good challenge to get the team out of the relegation zone. They were underperforming when I got there. It’s gone pretty well.’

The Chinnor ship certainly hasn’t sunk with Easter at the helm. In fact, it has sailed serenely through untroubled waters this term and now the club is dreaming of even better things to come.

Chinnor’s average win in National One this season has been 40-15. They have won 21 of 25 league games and have scored nearly 1,000 points. It has been a remarkable campaign.

‘We’ve kept faith with certain non-negotiables around training,’ Easter says.

‘I’ve spent most of my coaching career with professionals and we brought a level of professional detail around fitness and tactics without overcomplicating anything.

‘We brought an intensity to training the guys weren’t used to. There was no reason why we couldn’t be the fittest team in the league. With a full pre-season and a bit of recruitment, I’d say we definitely were. The work of the players has been phenomenal considering they are part time and all have jobs.

‘I can compare it to full-time teams. These guys really put it in. It’s going to take time in the Championship. Going from National One to the second tier is a big jump in terms of physicality which can have an impact on the players. That goes up another level again when you go to the Premiership. We need to be ready to probably see a few more injuries next season.

‘We’re going to invest in our strength and conditioning and medical teams as a result. We’ll need a doctor. These are all the things we’re discussing at the moment. We’ll need to sign a few players and there will be contracting to be done, but we want to reward the players who got us promoted.

‘Maybe I should have picked up the phone when Simon called! I’ve played and coached at the highest level which is where I want to be but I’m loving working with Chinnor and the USA.

‘It’s a nice balance.’

It is an unusual one too. Not many coaches work at two such contrasting levels. But Easter’s Chinnor job sits alongside his other position as forwards and defence chief with the Eagles.

After failing to qualify for the 2023 World Cup, the USA are beginning a new era after former player Scott Lawrence succeeded Gary Gold as head coach. The USA will host rugby’s global showpiece in 2031 as the game remains desperate to crack the American dream.

‘The USA have got the right man in charge. Scott knows the country’s rugby system and has his boots on the ground – that’s vitally important,’ Easter says.

‘Scott knows what is needed and understands American rugby. Combining my two roles means I do miss Chinnor games but I look at that in a positive way. If I’m working with international players, it allows me to improve my coaching and that in turn should make Chinnor a better team.

‘We had a three-match tour of Europe in November that included wins over Romania, Brazil and Spain. We were expected to win those games, but you’ve still got to go and do it.

‘There’s been a lot of change in USA rugby since they failed to qualify for last year’s World Cup. There is a lot to do in terms of improving the team and growing the popularity of the sport for 2031.

‘One thing that’s important is playing home games. You can’t grow the game in a country if you’re not playing there and the USA hasn’t played a home match for a long time now.

‘That’s going to change this summer. We’ve got Romania and Scotland in the USA in July and those will be fantastic games for us to see our development.

‘There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes with 2031 in mind with World Rugby and the game’s authorities involved. It’s very exciting.’