The format never fails, despite the conditions. The prestige grows.
Fuck, I love the ABB. I’ve written about it before. The Australian Boardriders Battle competition. An annual teams event pitting Aus’s best boardriders clubs in two days of feverish competition. Held in my hometown, at my home break. Newcastle Beach.
It’s one of the best weekends on the local calendar. You might remember my efforts last year. I had good reason to miss finals day. A category 10 hangover saw to it.
But this year I wasn’t in Newy, and was lucky enough to catch the webcast instead.
What a treat it was.
Byron Bay Boardriders, led by former ‘CT stalwart Danny Wills along with Soli Bailey, Dakoda Walters and a few others, took the title in a trademark nailbiter.
It was a classic final. BB came out swinging with eights and nines, leaving fellow finalists Merewether, Avoca, and Snapper Rocks reeling. But with father and daughter combo Josh and Sierra Kerr keeping Snapper on track, solid as a rock Ace Buchan ripping for Avoca and Morgan Ciblic taking control for Merewether it was always going to be tight.
Merewether were brilliant. Down and out two-thirds of the way through the hour long final, languishing in last place. Only for CT-adjacent Phillipa Anderson, sister of Craig, to drop an absolute smoker back into the rocks at Shark Alley. An 8.8 put them right back into first with only five or so minutes remaining.
Each club’s power surfer was required to paddle out, get a wave and make it back to shore and through the gate 50 metres up from the shoreline. Less than a couple of points between all four of them. A flurry of last-minute action action. Boards ditched on the rocks as competitors raced to beat the clock. BB coming out tops, just.
It’s heart pumping stuff. Always is.
Fuck, I love the ABB.
Do you know the format?
Each team has an open. A junior. A woman. An over-35.
One hour, five surfers (one goes twice for a nominated power wave).
Penalties if you don’t get through all of your surfers. Penalties if you don’t make it back up the beach in time. Bonuses if you’re first across the finish line. That’s 4 x 4 surfers per hour long heat. Very little down time. Lots of waves ridden. There’s tactics. Intrigue. Running races.
Every club in Australia worth its salt gets involved. And there’s more than a few. I know of at least five or six qualifying conferences that filter into the final comp. Must be 40 or more clubs in total.
You get father and son combos like the Kerrs. Former elite pros. Up and coming juniors. Core underground rippers. Legions of flag-waving support crews.They’re passionate. Committed. Ready to have fun.
It’s a festival atmosphere set to a backdrop of top tier surfing.
Then chuck in a professional webcast with the likes of Sean Doherty, Vaughan Blakey, Reggae Ellis, and a few women whose names I didn’t catch, doing the call (please let me know who I missed!).
Plus there’s Stace Galbraith doing vox pops with competitors on the beach. Stacy is great. Surely the most tuned in man to Australian surfing. Not afraid to stick a microphone in front of a surfer when they’ve just ran full pace back up the beach after nailing a score. Or lost a heat for their club. Yet they always answer. And it’s all in good spirit.
As a package the commentary is honest. Insightful. More often than not very fucking funny.
The format never fails, despite the conditions. It’s akin to the glory days of the Uncle Toby’s Iron Man broadcasts in the nineties.
Now in its tenth year at Newcastle beach, the prestige of the title continues to grow. As does the surfing level. As does the quality of the production. As does the entire package.
When it’s going to be elevated to the ISA?
The Olympics?
Can you imagine teams USA, Brazil and Australia battling out for medals?
Who would you back?
And to the WSL.
The poor old WSL.
We’re only one month into the year and they’re already running behind Da Hui, da Aikaus and now da ABB and Surfing Australia in terms of overall product quality.
I wouldn’t even know where to start.
But how about this: fuck, I love the ABB.
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I think the only fitting end end to a ABB contest is that everyone, especially the coaches and fluffers join hand with all surfers and mutually wank each other off.
That is EXACTLY where the ABB is at
what’s the score?
I wonder where Josh and Sierra sit on the Snapper leaderboard?
The festival of everything that’s fucked with amateur surfcomps and the egomaniacs that follow and support it, again just an extension of the surfing adjacent industry long running advertising campaign to sell product.
Didn’t they have fiat car keys dangling from drones for surfers to try and grab last year? Surprised ELO hasn’t started doing that yet.
If you get a Fiat key that fits, does that make you the winner or the loser?
Boardriders clubs elevate surfing performances
Sad mate just plain and simple sad.
Nothing wrong with Byron the town. Its the people who live there that fuck it up.
Same applies to australia
And the US West Coast, but noplace so much as the Jersey Shore.
That’s cause they all come from Bondi and the northern beaches with their Range Rovers.
No originally the surf exploitation was done by a bunch of soft cock rich yank draft dodgers and california brotherhood of eternal love drug dealers, they kicked the whole thing of .
How small is Danny Wills? Geez, their team girl is bigger.
We call Willsy the jockey in the surf. He is a fucking tiny prick. Also was known as the phatom as he used to shit next to the toilet in high school and no one knew who was doing it.
I think it’s like Vegemite, you need to be Australian to like it.
…exactly, just spread it on thin with lots of butter.
I like the last ten minutes, the rest is shit.
Had a crack at tuning in based on Surfads frothy endorsement last year.
Got about a minute into QS surf before shutting it down- did note 1500 watching the livestream which is more than a typical Q-ey.
I just have an anti-pavlovian response to QS surf unless I see Filipe Toledo’s name in the draw.
maybe next year.
Dakoda Walters, from Angas?
Who names their kid with a stupid name and then spells it wrong? Christ there were some fuckwits hooking up in the 90s.
We stole him for our club.
Happy to see Soli has put that Rivals season 3 performance behind him.
Oh Philipa, what an unfortunate face.
You left out the surf. Told us all about the drama, and the individ/team social stuff……surf?
about like Pipe this week — garbage
Competitively,the comp waves were the usual accompanying insignificant condom when compared to the usual shit fight to get a carpark, check the waves and look at oh shit I confess…..birdlife…
Oh I thought I had a line in there about it. Smashed this thing out after a couple of beers last night, so a few things missing. Bit of a wince to wake up and read it.
It was contestable beach breaks. QS quality.
It should also obviously be ‘father and daughter combo’ re Kerrs. Sorry Sierra!
“a couple”
totally quantifiable!
My English Lit teacher always told me if I write stoned, edit in the morning. Obvs decades before blogs, but i still fuck up posting shit that makes me “wince” next morning after my internal laughter subsides
Think I needed to do the opposite with this one. Reads like a high school essay.
‘… and a fun time was had by all’
Don’t be hard on yerself… the wozzle falling behind “da ABB” made me snigger into my IPA. What a bunch of absolute fuckheads to put out a surfing product inferior to surfers literally running around on the fucking beach.
The principle kind of buried your story again anyway so just know we enjoyed the read. If only there was more surfing to read about.
Standard here.
“I’m late for my heat, bro!” (#9 poem pirated from EOS Sunday letter)
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx….
We used to go pretty good in the the good OLE surf league… especially at getting banned from various east coast hotels ,motels and caravan parks…
Not sure how to respond to such positivity about surfing, let alone from a BG local. Esp compared to the Florida thread. So you going to organize a live comment thread for next year for us? Maybe DR will even join?
It’s my understanding that the default response to positivity here is, “Settle down, cunt.”
Indeed xox
Out surfing a few years back. These local guys were paddling out, one at a time, snaking dropping in, whatever, to get the next set wave then going in.
It wasn’t till I saw the “coach” on the beach when I went in that I realised they were training for the ABB.
Fucken ABB
Is that better?
Try pmq,they actually pay to wear a jersey and be coached every afternoon.
It’s such a toss, for tossers