Paul Hull felt his Bristol Rugby side's bonus-point victory at Plymouth finally underlined their status as Championship promotion contenders.

With unbeaten leaders Exeter thrashing Nottingham, Bristol moved back into second place in the table with their 33-8 win at Brickfields.

And head coach Hull, who hailed his side's most complete performance of the season so far, believes his players are now dealing with the expectation placed on them.

Bristol scored five tries in dreadful conditions in Devon to ensure they go into Sunday's clash with Nottingham full of confidence.

And Hull said: "If you're going to be contenders in this league, you're going to have to come to places like this in these sort of conditions and get the result.

"It's not always going to be glamorous but I thought we were quite ruthless in a lot of aspects of our game-plan.

"As we have found out, no away match is easy. We're coming to terms with that and coming to terms with the expectations that are put on our shoulders.

"We know that we are the Premiership team that has come down, so there will be raised motivation from the opposition.

"We found that difficult at the start but I think we're coming to terms with it now."

Bristol Rugby have now impressed in successive matches, having beaten Coventry 46-28 and scored eight tries in front of the Sky Sports cameras 10 days earlier.

And Hull was delighted they were able back up that display with another fine performance at Brickfields on Saturday.

"I really was pleased with that performance. That was probably one of our most complete performances of the season so far," said Hull.

"We really wanted to push on from last week – and to score five tries in those conditions away from home is very pleasing.

"This is more important than last week, because we needed to put together back-to-back performances. That's what we talked about in the week – 'get the attitude right and the performances will come'.

"You're going to have to wear down oppositions and soften them up – and we did that.

"We had a foundation up front as usual, which is good for us, and we scored a few through the backs, which is good to see in these conditions."

Bristol Rugby duo Luke and Tom Arscott returned to their hometown club – and both impressed, with full-back Luke scoring a fine solo try to clinch his side's bonus point.

And Hull said: "We didn't talk too much about their homecoming, but obviously it was in their heads. They wanted to show how far they've come as individual players – and they showed that."