Not the biggest thrashing in Premiership history, maybe, but this was the sort of non-contest to give a competition a bad name. There was something dispiriting about the inevitability of what unfolded, albeit enlivened by a pair of quickfire hat-tricks, each harvested in less than a quarter of an hour.
Tom Parton did make Premiership history with his hat-trick, the third scored 25 seconds into the 21st minute, breaking David Strettle’s record for the earliest hat-trick 11 years ago, also for Saracens. That set up a scoreline that read 32-0 on the hour, when Josh Hathaway scored his first hat-trick for Gloucester. He racked his up in 13 minutes, which was even quicker than Parton, who scored his in 15. If only the previous hour had not happened, the record would have been his.
