Mark Bright plundered a Greene King IPA Championship-high 28 tries last season but claims he is far more concerned with leading London Scottish back to the play-offs than any personal glory, writes Luke Baker.

The fact that Bright’s haul came from the back row makes his feat even more impressive and the number eight picked up where he left off by crossing the whitewash in his side’s season opener against Moseley at the Athletic Ground last weekend.

Despite scoring a total of three tries to Moseley’s one, Scottish only picked up a losing bonus point as they went down 23-19 – visiting kicker Glyn Hughes booting 18 points.

The Exiles will look to bounce back this Saturday when they travel to newly-promoted Ealing Trailfinders and it would be tough to bet against Bright getting his name on the scoresheet once again.

But the man himself insists there is little pleasure in dotting down unless it helps Scottish to victories in their quest to finish in the Greene King IPA Championship top four for the second season running.

“I’m not too worried about scoring tries as long as we win. It’s much better scoring when you are winning as well,” said Bright, who also captains the team.

“It’s nice to get them but I don’t have to do a lot – just sit on the back of the rolling maul which is pretty handy.

“I’ve not set myself any sort of try target – I’ll just take it as they come. If I start setting targets the boys might start thinking I’m getting a bit of white-line fever and won’t pass the ball, so I better not do that.

“Our team target is probably similar to last season in that we’ll be aiming for the top four. It’s going to be a tough competition this year though, which you saw at the weekend.

“Obviously Moseley beat us, Ealing ran Rotherham close and then Bristol lost to Bedford as well, so it’s a strong division.”

Last year, London Scottish ended the regular season in third spot before losing the two-legged semi-final 65-37 to Worcester Warriors.

Bright and co are targeting a return to the play-offs as the minimum goal although the defeat to Moseley was something of an inauspicious start.

With 21 games still to go, there is plenty of time for Scottish to turn it around but the New Zealand-born back-rower is adamant they must kick-start that process against Ealing.

“I expect Ealing will have looked at our first game and seen where Moseley took us on – our discipline was pretty poor around the breakdown so we have to be squeaky clean there this week,” added Bright.

“Ealing like to throw the ball round more than Moseley, so they will be a different beast.

“There’s no danger of us underestimating Ealing because we probably did that against Moseley a little bit.

“That was to our detriment, so it won’t be happening again.”

*Formed in 2009, the Greene King IPA Championship is the second tier of professional rugby union in England. To keep up-to-date with all the latest news follow @ChampRugby on Twitter, or visit rfu.com/championship