Paul begins trying game as Sale are torn apart

Sale could not have been more comprehensively beaten up if they had been hauled down to Gloucester docks for a midnight seeing-to and then chucked off the top of the cathedral. And rarely can a score of 8-6 to the visitors after half an hour have been so misleading. Six Gloucester tries later – including three in nine minutes in the third quarter – it was a rout.

The odds on Gloucester winning the Premiership were slashed from 8-1 to 4-1 after their opening win at Harlequins. Expect another point or two to be shaved off after this jaw-dropping display of what can best be described as keep-ball. Particularly when the tries began to come, a process begun by Henry Paul in the last play before the interval. Sale were called upon to tackle, tackle and tackle again, and finished up worn out like a favourite old cardigan. It was not jump-out-of-your seats rugby, but a sun-bathed Shed, who of course stand up anyway, lapped it up.

Sale scored from a single phase in the second minute, a beautifully simple crossfield move from Chris Jones's line-out take putting Mark Cueto over at the corner. And with Jason Robinson initially returning some wayward kicks with more interest than is currently to be found at any high-street building society, the newly rebranded Sharks must have felt that fins could only get better.

How wrong they were. Jones put in some good spoiling work at the line-out and the elastic second row also earned himself grudging brownie points from the home crowd by giving Phil Vickery a taste of his studs then the Gloucester captain twice fell off-side at rucks.

But Charlie Hodgson missed three out of four kicks at goal and with Gloucester's pick-and-drive tactics entering overdrive, allied with the occasional driving maul, the pattern was set.

When Paul's try came, after Ludovic Mercier had kicked two penalties for Gloucester, it was reward for the persistence of the cross-coder who has had a bad week after being omitted from the 53-man squad called up by England for two days training.

Paul, capped against France last spring, must be wondering what the future holds with his adopted country, but there was some consolation when he backed up Thinus Delport wide to the right and ripped the ball from a maul to dive over the line.

Up to that point Gloucester worst enemy was over-eagerness. Too often the support player overran the ball-carrier and a chance was lost. But with the replacement James Forrester ranging dangerously across the back row to provide both an assured link and timely impetus, everything came right. Forrester collected the first and last of his side's second-half tries. In between, his break up the middle paved the way for Paul to keep the ball alive in a tackle and create a fine, multi-phase try for Tom Beim.

The bonus point was notched up when Delport rounded off another power-packed sequence after 58 minutes, and Jake Boer got in on the act nine minutes later.

Mercier, like Hodgson, will have better days with the boot, having missed three of his nine shots at the posts. Otherwise the Sharks would have been harpooned to the tune of a half-century, not that Gloucester's coaches were getting carried away with it all. "We did something similar in the second half to Newcastle and Bath last season," Nigel Melville noted. Melville's cohort, Dean Ryan, suggested, worryingly for the Premiership, that there was much more to come. "We've been working with this squad for a few months," said Ryan, "and only just seeing some of the things we're trying to do. The potential is massive."

Gloucester: H Paul; T Delport (M Garvey, 74), T Fanolua, R Todd, T Beim (J Simpson-Daniel, 69); L Mercier, A Gomarsall; T Woodman (P Collazo, 68), O Azam (C Fortey, 62), P Vickery (capt), E Pearce (R Fidler, 45), M Cornwell, J Boer, J Paramore, A Hazell (J Forrester, 22).

Sale: J Robinson; M Cueto, J Baxendell (D Harris, 51), M Deane (Harris, 6-14), S Hanley (V Going, 69); C Hodgson (N Walshe, 64), B Redpath (capt); K Yates (J Thorp, 55), C Marais (A Titterrell, 55), B Stewart, C Jones, D Schofield (S Lines, 55), A Sanderson (A Perelini, 65), P Anglesea, S Pinkerton.

Referee: D Pearson (Northumberland).