PAUL Doran-Jones and Freddie Burns have been ruled out of Gloucester's opening match of the 2010-11 Aviva Premiership campaign against Exeter at Sandy Park on Saturday.

Prop Doran-Jones has hardly trained this summer after picking up an ankle injury on the Cherry and Whites' pre-season tour to Portugal while youngster Burns has been suffering with a quad problem.

However, the good news for head coach Bryan Redpath is that new signing Jim Hamilton has trained this week while Mike Tindall and Nicky Robinson have recovered from tight hamstring and calves respectively.

"There are definite no-no's for Paul Doran-Jones and Freddie Burns," said Redpath. "Jim Hamilton has trained this week as have Mike Tindall and Nicky Robinson.

"Jim has trained fully this week and we will assess him but he is hopefully over his viral thing.

"So it is a more or less clean bill of health after three pre-season games.

"It is positive news, we went into last week with a lot more missing, Olivier Azam was ill as well.

"This weekend we have five or six coming back into selection.

"Robinson and (Tim) Taylor can fill in at full back so we will deal with it.

"Paulhas not really played much this summer so I am not too fussed about it."

Scottish international Hamilton has been suffering with a viral infection and missed out on training with his new club mates all summer.

Tindall and Robinson were not considered for the 15-10 defeat to Munster last Friday night after both limped off in the 24-14 win over the Ospreys two weeks ago.

So far Tindall has only got 53 minutes under his belt from the win at the Liberty Stadium while Robinson got half an hour in the wins over the Scarlets and the Ospreys.

Redpath will be keen to get the season off to as good a start as possible after finishing seventh last season.

Gloucester and newly-promoted Exeter have only met twice before in competitive rugby, both at Kingsholm, with Redpath's men victorious on both occasions.

In 1982 Gloucester won 34-3 in the fourth round of the John Player Cup and 20 years later, the Kingsholm side won 35-6 in the sixth round of the Powergen Cup in December 2002.