St. Mary’s opened up their California Conference season with a fairly straightforward 61-7 defeat of San Diego State this past weekend.

Although the opponent was strong and the score impressive, SMCC Head Coach Tim O’Brien was underwhelmed by his team’s effort.

“If you look at four critical areas of our play, scrums, lineouts, midfield attack, and defense, we went about one out of four,” said O’Brien. “Our defense was good. Our first-up tackle count was very high. But our scrums were average, our lineout was so-so, and our midfield attack was poor.”

Observers were impressed once again with the play of center Dylan Audsley, but O’Brien said there needs to be more, especially as his team prepares to face mighty BYU this coming Saturday.

“We need all those aspects of play if we want to compete with BYU,” said O’Brien. 

The St. Mary’s coach was very complimentary of SDSU Coach Alex Lichtig and what he is trying to accomplish with the Aztecs, and said the Gaels’ opponents were tough, and will continue to get better.

“I thought our defense was quite strong and our ability to move the ball and look for space went very well,” said lock Austen Middleton, who stepped in for an injured teammate. “We are team that's all about attacking space and looking to move players around. Playing on his team you need to play not just as a forward in my case, but also play as a back and get involved in the backline in order to move ball around the field. You become and all around utility player capable of doing different moves and plays familiar to both the forwards and backs.”

Middleton continues to develop in the forwards, Audsley is still a central part of the St. Mary’s efforts, but scrumhalf Holden Yungert is also a player to worry about.

But O’Brien is worrying about the Cougars. We at Goff Rugby Report haven’t reported much on BYU because they haven’t played many games of note. Their game against Utah (a big win) was billed as a scrimmage. Their clash with Colorado was called off. Their participation in the Red Rock Tournament was a series of shortened games with mixed lineups. This past week, they beat Dixie State 53-12 with their 2nd team.

So the first-up BYU team hasn’t really played. O’Brien said that’s irrelevant.

“They are so experienced and so well organized, I don’t think they need to play a lot of rugby to be good,” he said. “It is still David vs. Goliath.”