Mike Friday is looking for a performance from London Welsh when they welcome high flying Bedford Blues to Old Deer Park on Saturday (2pm).

Welsh missed the chance to move up to third in the table last Sunday when they slipped to a second consecutive Championship defeat, losing 23-6 to Bristol at the Memorial Stadium.

The Dragons, though, were not without their chances. Twice in the first half Welsh carved Bristol open, only to fail to turn those opportunities into points, and with the play-offs looming ever nearer Friday is prioritising a performance against the Blues on Saturday.

“The Bedford game is important because we want to win at home and put on a performance, but in the context of positions in the league the harsh reality is that whether you finish first, second, third or fourth it doesn’t make that much difference,” said Friday.

“Of course it’s nice to stick your chest out and say you finished first or second, but the professional reality is that you don’t get to the Premiership by finishing first at this part of the season. You get to the Premiership by winning the play-off final.

“So more important for us is the performance against Bedford, and if we perform and we address those small little issues that didn’t go as well as they should have gone at Bristol then I’m sure the result will take care of itself.”

The “issues” Friday refers to include Welsh twice letting Bristol off the hook in a first half that saw the Exiles trail 10-6 to a Mariano Sambucetti try. Junior Fatialofa’s early second half touch down gave Bristol breathing space, and Welsh’s hopes of even securing a losing bonus point disappeared when Errie Claassens’ try was ruled out for a double movement.

“Those incidents were crucial at critical times in the game. We were under pressure at scrum time and those were opportunities for us to release some pressure, and if we aspire to make the Premiership we have to be able to do that,” said Friday.

“Those things have been happening for a few weeks now but we’re working very hard on the training field to address that.

“The boys are frustrated because we’re creating these opportunities, so we’re doing the hard part, but we’re not putting the ball in the back of the net. We need to up our execution.

“We didn’t get the rub of the green but we can’t get down about that, we’ve just got to keep creating the opportunities and then sooner or later we’ll start to bang them in the net. We’d be more worried if we weren’t creating.”

Last weekend’s defeat to Bristol was the Exiles’ second championship defeat in a row after the Dragons had missed on the chance to go second when they went down 29-13 at Rotherham o January 19.

Those defeats sandwiched a British & Irish Cup win for Welsh over Ulster Ravens, but while Friday concedes that with only three games to go in the regular season the Dragons would prefer to be building some winning momentum ahead of the play-offs, he’s not unduly concerned.

“We have to put this all in perspective. Right here right now, London Welsh are in the play-offs - that’s all we can do at this time of the season,” he said.

“We now need to get ourselves in the best shape physically and rugby wise to take advantage in the play-off.

“That means we’ve got another three or four weeks where we need to keep working on the rugby and conditioning parts of our game to get ourselves ready for the business end of the season”