London Welsh may have claimed the neighbour bragging rights on Saturday beating London Scottish 36-9, but coach James Buckland is targeting improvements.

The exiles showed no sign of a Clifton Lane hangover, having let slip a 14-point lead to go down by a point at Rotherham, and Scottish were comprehensively put to the sword thanks to tries from Josh McNally, Kieran Murphy, Barney Maddison, Seb Jewell and Kristian Phillips.

Welsh had trailed to three Peter Lydon penalties in sodden conditions at the Athletic Ground, but a few adjustments in the scrum and a reduction in Welsh’s error count saw the visitors dominate the remainder of the contest.

It leaves them fourth in the Championship table ahead of a visit to Old Deer Park by the unbeaten Yorkshire Carnegie on Saturday.

And Buckland is hoping to see signs of improvement when the whistle goes.

He said: “We were a little bit disappointed to give Scottish nine cheap points in the opening 20 minutes, but the boys kept their heads and stuck to task.

“We’re a team which likes to play with balance, but with it being a wet day we knew the set-piece would be our best weapon.

“For 20 minutes Scottish stayed in the battle, but once we got to grips with the ref at scrum time and had worn Scottish down a bit, we managed to cash in.”

He added: “We know we’re a side who can score tries, but we’ve just got to make sure we play rugby in the right areas, taking our chances when they come.

“There were some examples of hot potato against Scottish. We’ve got to make sure we stop giving the opposition easy opportunities to get in the game.

Tries from McNally and Murphy saw Welsh take a 12-9 lead into the break against Scottish, and it was the dominance of the Welsh forwards in the second half which wore the home side down and paved the way for three more tries.

Buckland added: “We’re very lucky to have some really effective back rowers in our squad, with very balanced skill sets.

“Kieran Murphy has been out injured for a few weeks, but he came back in today and played really well, in unison with Ryan Hodson and Barney Maddison.

“Ben Pienaar and Aaron Carpenter both came on at the end and produced some telling turnovers, and we’ve also got Will Skuse to come back from injury and Jesse Liston waiting for an opportunity.

“We’re very fortunate to be well stocked in that area.”

This weekend’s visit of Yorkshire (kick off 2pm) is a re-match of last season’s British and Irish Cup final, which London Welsh won 33-10.

Buckland said: “We’ve got a very big contest against Yorkshire Carnegie on Saturday, so while the effort against Scottish was very pleasing, we’ll shift our focus to that very quickly.”

As for London Scottish, back to back defeats leave them second from bottom in the Championship table – they go to Rotherham Titans this weekend.