Gloucester soar to top of PREM after dismantling hapless Harlequins

Gloucester continued their impressive start to the Gallagher Prem season by handing out a 48-0 thrashing to hapless Harlequins at Kingsholm.

The eight-try win followed up their impressive opening day victory over Exeter at Sandy Park – but that success was far more meritorious as Harlequins were incredibly poor on the day.

Quins were outplayed in every aspect of the game and never looked like opening their tally. They were without a few leading players including England internationals, Marcus Smith and Alex Dombrandt, but it will take time for them to recover from this.

Ben Loader, Jac Morgan, Will Trenholm, Charlie Atkinson, Seb Atkinson, Will Joseph, Caolon Engefield and George Barton were all on the try-scoring sheet, with Barton converting four.

Gloucester suffered an early blow losing South African lock, Jean Kleyn, to undergo an HIA in the first minute but they overcame this setback to dominate the opening exchanges and were rewarded when Loader collected a crossfield kick from Charlie Atkinson to score.

Kleyn returned in time to help his side continue to batter the opposition line as Quins conceded six penalties in the first quarter. As a result Will Evans was yellow-carded for persistent team infringements for the hosts to immediately capitalise when Morgan finished off a driving line-out.

Kleyn departed for another assessment before Evans returned from the sin-bin but he could easily have been replaced by James Dun, whose deliberate knock-on escaped the appropriate sanction.

It mattered little as it continued to be one-way traffic with Trenholm surging over from close-range before Kleyn re-entered the fray once again in time to witness another try when Charlie Atkinson brushed aside some weak tackling for the bonus-point. Barton added the conversion for a 24-0 interval lead.

Within four minutes of the restart, Gloucester had sealed victory by scoring another two tries with both Seb Atkinson and Englefield racing over.

Joseph and George Barton were next to cross before Gloucester rang the changes with skipper Dewi Lake, prop Afolabi Fasogbon and the two Atkinsons all departing.

After 63 minutes, former Northampton skipper, George Furbank, ended a miserable competitive debut for him by being substituted.

However the replacements disrupted Gloucester’s flow so remarkably the final quarter finished scoreless to enable Harlequins to avoid the embarrassment of conceding more than 50 points.