Yesterday, he might not have been at full throttle, but his two tries, general pace and eye for a break was too much for the home side to handle as Gloucester powered their way to a convincing victory.

Dean Ryan's side are one of only four unbeaten teams left in the Guinness Premiership but had they shown more discipline and control in the second half, would have won by an even greater margin.

After weathering the sort of bombardment strictly reserved for a west country derby, Gloucester found themselves 27-9 ahead at the break. Once their forwards, particularly the hyper-active Andy Hazell, the relentless Alex Brown and the workaholic Peter Buxton got down to the nitty gritty, Gloucester had far too much Premiership experience in key areas for Bristol to handle.

Their first try came after 22 minutes when they opted to punt a penalty deep into Bristol territory. A driven line-out splintered the Bristol defence and Forrester, operating close to the back of the maul, was pushed over to make the score 8-6 following two penalties by Jason Strange.

But the real game-breaker came in first-half stoppage time. Gloucester had got themselves 20-9 ahead thanks to the boot of Mercier but when Patrice Collazo, the serious menace of a French prop, found himself in acres of space with room to work in, he aimed a kick downfield that found Haydn Thomas suspiciously close to off-side.

That did not stop the scrum-half from hacking forward and eventually applying the downward pressure for the try. Mercier swirled home the conversion to cement Gloucester's advantage.

Gloucester scored twice more after the break but failed to build on their dominance. The third try was something special and once again owed everything to Forrester's daring and footballing skill.

They controlled a scrum close to their own line before the number eight picked up and sent Mark Foster away up the touchline. With Bristol in retreat, Foster came inside and linked with Mike Tindall who put Jon Goodridge home to score a superb try.

The final try came with 20 minutes remaining after Brown's footballing ability in midfield allowed him to get a pass away to Forrester and although he had Goodridge in support, sent Brian Lima the wrong way and sped in to the posts.

It completed a fine victory that could have been even greater in the closing stages. But yellow cards for Olivier Azam and Patrice Collazo took the steam out of Gloucester's efforts.

"In terms of the number of points we have gained, I am pleased but we still have a long way to go in terms of performance," Ryan said. "We didn't come down here to play fancy stuff or throw the ball around.

"We needed the right elements in our game to get the result. But the only thing I can say is that we are not happy with ourselves in a number of areas.

"If we had been playing Leicester, we would have been up against it. There is still plenty to work on but the points at this stage are very pleasing."

Gloucester will monitor the fitness of Phil Vickery and Tindall this week. Vickery has as sore AC joint in his shoulder, while Tindall came off with a bang to the ribs.