Those wanting to know if England’s opening win in Dublin was a one-off now have their answer. Once again there was no stopping Eddie Jones’s rampant team from securing a convincing bonus-point victory, an outcome that sets up a tasty Six Nations grand slam eliminator with a similarly unbeaten Wales in Cardiff on Saturday week.

English optimism has a long history of dissolving across the Severn Bridge but a serious Wales performance will be required to diminish England’s current confidence levels. The same collective pace, power and intent they showed in Ireland was evident on a blustery, occasionally damp afternoon, with Jonny May the main beneficiary. The Leicester wing’s hat-trick of tries in the opening 29 minutes made him the first Englishman to achieve the feat against France since Jake Jacob in 1924.

England’s Owen Farrell and his gang of enforcers steamroller France | Andy Bull Read more

The home team were superior in all departments, kicking cleverly, hitting hard and finding acres of space in behind a slow-witted defence. “Very painful,” was the verdict of the French captain, Guilhem Guirado, and, from a Gallic perspective, he was not wrong. This was France's worst defeat to England since 1911. Jones was careful not to go overboard, clearly determined to keep his players’ feet on the ground, but similarities with the plodding England team beaten 22-16 in Paris a year ago are increasingly hard to find.

Few players in world rugby are more improved than May, with Elliot Daly also enjoying a productive afternoon and Courtney Lawes further underlining the strength in depth at Jones’s disposal. If there was a nagging sense that New Zealand, for example, might have stuck 50 or 60 points on their opponents, the fact England still have obvious room for improvement will concern all their rivals.

The galloping advances the team are making under the leadership of Owen Farrell, who scored 17 points, including his side’s sixth and final try, have not been so thrillingly obvious since England’s heyday in the early 2000s, not least in 2001 when they went to Cardiff and won 44-15. No one would be silly enough to predict a similarly one-sided contest this time but even a scrappy away win would leave Italy and Scotland standing between a second grand slam in four years under Jones.

The most immediate priority for their opponents will be to end England’s remarkable record of early tries, which has now seen them score within three minutes of kick-off in their past five Tests. Inside 66 seconds May had his first try on the board, touching down Daly’s intelligent left‑foot grubber after the Saracens-bound full-back had made swift ground following a midfield turnover.

Almost every day is currently a May Day at Twickenham and before the half-hour mark the 28-year-old had extended his tally to 12 tries in his last 12 Tests. First, he showed dazzling footwork to outwit Damian Penaud to score in the left corner before successfully scooping up Chris Ashton’s chip ahead to complete his hat-trick. May possesses a unique talent, but even the quicksilver ex-Wales wing Shane Williams would have been proud of this particular treble.

Penaud did make slight amends with a 35th-minute try set up by Yoann Huget but when the classy Henry Slade dummied his way past Guirado to claim his side’s bonus-point try just before half-time the game was effectively over. While France squandered a 16-0 point half-time lead against Wales in Paris, England were never going to surrender their 30-8 interval advantage here.

A penalty try and a yellow card for Gaël Fickou when a sprinting Ashton was tackled without the ball with the line beckoning merely added to French woe and the last half-hour was largely a question of how much damage England would ultimately inflict. In the event there was only one more try, for Farrell after May, for the umpteenth time, had burned off the cover.

If there was a slight debate as to whether the last defender, Antoine Dupont, was impeded by England’s flier as he vainly tried to gather the rolling ball, there was no disputing Farrell’s fitness or desire that ensured he was first to the rebound.

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Even a brief touchline scuffle sparked by Kyle Sinckler throwing an arm at Arthur Iturria did little to rouse the less than irresistible visitors. It was another of those days for France, who had travelled without much in the way of hope and ended up largely stripped of their dignity. They have now won three of their past 19 Tests and their head coach, Jacques Brunel, is edging into the kind of uneasy territory that cost his predecessor, Guy Novès, his job. Typing Brunel’s name always reminds some of us of his near namesake Jean-Jacques Burnel, the bass guitarist of The Stranglers. Forty years on, sadly, we are also reaching the point where French rugby has no more heroes any more.

On this evidence it will certainly rank among the more startling about-turns if this result is somehow reversed when the two sides meet again in their World Cup pool game in Yokohama this autumn. The final score was England’s record margin of victory against Les Bleus in the Six Nations and will be particularly fondly remembered by the Wasps scrum-half, Dan Robson, who finally made it off the bench for the last 11 minutes to earn a long-awaited first cap as a replacement for Ben Youngs.

With the possible exception of the prop Mako Vunipola, who sat out the closing stages with an enormous ice pack on his ankle, England could hardly be in healthier shape for their tournament-defining visit to Cardiff.