San Francisco Golden Gate traveled to Moraga, Calif. Saturday for a friendly with Saint Mary’s and emerged 49-17 winners. The Elite Cup club started its top side and ran out to a 32-12 halftime lead before using all their subs.

St. Mary’s did give SFGG fits on the day.

“They’re a good scrambling, very fit team. They’re very physical at the breakdown. Everything was broken play, but they scored some pretty good tries, though,” said SFGG coach Karl Thomson.

“We didn’t push them around as much, but we competed with them around the field. Obviously, we had a little bit more size and some of our tries came through that forwards barge from about 22 meters out. We used our physicality by staying on our feet, which was part of our game plan to stay on our feet and wait for our support to arrive. We did that really well.”

Former Cal standout Neil Barrett spelled Eagle Chris Biller at hooker midway through the game and played well.

Just two games into their 2013 campaign, following a disappointing 2012 season, SFGG is 2-0 with a pair of lopsided wins over good teams.

“We’re progressing every week,” said Thomson. “We hit our goals and every wee we’re presenting ourselves and getting better at certain aspects of the game, and that’s hopefully what we’ll continue to do to the point where we’ll finish a game and be very happy with our performance throughout the game.”