Bath's superiority was virtually complete throughout in terms of their territorial dominance that was established through a withering performance from their forwards in which the likes of Danny Grewcock, Michael Lipman and Lee Mears stood out.

Although the defeat will cut Gloucester to the core, it does not derail Dean Ryan's long-term goal to establish his side at the head of the Guinness Premiership.

Considering they spent so long without the ball and at times produced a brilliant scrambling defensive performance, they can be at least partly satisfied with a losing bonus point.

Their work-rate in difficult conditions was excellent and in the likes of Alex Brown, Nick Wood, Peter Buxton and Mike Tindall had willing warriors who worked their socks off.

But it was Bath's vastly superior first-half performance, where given the conditions they managed to retain possession and play some excellent attacking rugby through Butch James and Olly Barkley, that set them up for victory.

The critical try came 10 minutes after the re-start, when after a period of excellent defence, Bath retrieved a clearance kick from Olivier Azam and Nick Abendanon picked out Joe Maddock with a brilliant cross-field kick for the try.

Barkley added the conversion to go with a first-half penalty to give Bath a 10-0 lead, and although Chris Paterson picked a lovely line past Shaun Berne and Mears in the 60th minute to race over for a 50-metre score Gloucester could not engineer another try in the last quarter to snatch victory.

Due to technical issues, a full report will follow on Saturday