Well, not all of them – he has a wife and family, a successful business and is still, at 37, one of the finest surfers in the world – but after much speculation Julian Wilson took to Instagram in the week before Christmas to call time on his world championship tour comeback.
We haven’t really been able to call the Newcastle resident “Our Jules” for quite a while now, but for me there’ll always be in the champ just a bit of that cheeky grom with the long blond locks and puka shell necklace who took the junior ranks apart at the Noosa Festival of Surfing more than a quarter century ago.
With gaining a spot on the 2026 WSL world tour dependent on him winning the final two Challenger Series event, Jules quietly took his name off the competitor list for this month’s Pipe Challenger Pro and then posted: “Dreams of a WSL return fade away as I take @rivvia.projects by the horns. My true passion is building this brand into a reflection of my gratitude from the golden era in professional surfing which I’m very thankful to have experienced.”
As I wrote in this space in 2024 when Julian announced his comeback: “If Julian Wilson’s departure from the WSL world tour three years ago at the height of Covid cancellations and the gruelling isolation of hotel quarantine after travel was entirely predictable, his announcement last month that he will seek to return to it in 2025 came as a surprise to many, including this writer.”
I really thought he’d left his run just a little too late, that he’d been a couple of seasons too many out of the coloured jersey. But hold the phone! In May last year the one-time ASP world junior champion, 2018 world number two, and one of Australia’s top three pros on tour over a decade, finishing top 10 in seven of those seasons, burst out of the blocks at the Gold Coast Pro Trials at Burleigh Heads to win a wildcard into the main event, where he smashed all comers right up to the final, beaten only by a rampaging Filipe Toledo.
Two things were suddenly very clear: Jules still had what it takes, and he had the fire in his belly. Bring on the Challenger.
But it was over before it really began. A 49th place at his adopted-home event, the Newcastle Surfest, followed by a no-show at the Ballito Pro in South Africa and 65th in marginal conditions at Huntington. “Still waiting on a big boat to cruise by and send me a wave,” he posted to his Instagram.
As Stu Nettle noted on Swellnet, Jules used his time in Huntington to sign Mateus Herdy, the Brazilian upcomer who finished second, to Rivvia Projects, perhaps an early indicator that his interests were more focused on business than surf comps. After giving Portugal and Brazil a miss, he was down into the 80s on the ratings, meaning he needed to win the final two events. Decision time.
Julian has always been an exciter, since breaking out of the longboard ranks as a pre-teen and developing a bag of trademark cutting edge moves as one of Quiksilver’s precociously brilliant “Young Guns” in the early 2000s, and in his best years on tour he was a beautifully precise surfer whose rail game was almost always on point but who could break the line unexpectedly to boost one of the best airs in the game.
But as I look back on his spectacular career and wish only the best for him, his family and his brand in 2026 and all the years to follow, one defining moment stands out in so many highlights of two decades at the top. In the final at J-Bay that fearful day in 2015, when he kicked out down the line and paddled frantically back out to where Mick Fanning was fighting for his life, he didn’t think twice. His mate, his rival was in trouble. He paddled faster towards that thrashing great white. That’s when we knew what kind of stuff Julian Wilson was made of.
Vale Bruce Webb
Just as we were gearing up for the festive season, the saddest news from the land of the long white cloud, another good man down, suddenly and unexpectedly. Bruce was the bestie of a bestie of mine, so a bestie once removed, but we had our share of good times together around the world, particularly in Indo, France and NZ
A highly successful Auckland businessman, Bruce was such a gentleman, in and out of the surf. He had waiting your turn down to an art form. I remember paddling up the line at Medewi with him after a set in which he’d been totally shut down by a local. I told him my Bali trick. You work out who the local alpha surfer is, wait until he catches a wave, then paddle up to him and say, wow, you ripped the bag out of that. In all the years I’ve been coming here, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone link up power turns like that.
That tells him two things. 1) you know good surfing when you see it, and b) you’ve been coming here for a while and because you’re so old it probably wouldn’t hurt if he let you have a wave or two. Bruce took all of this in, and then the alpha local got another wave. Bruce paddled straight over to him and started talking. I got a leftover one so I didn’t see what transpired for the next few minutes, but when I got back to the takeoff Bruce and Alpha Man had forgotten all about surfing, they were laughing and telling stories like old mates. That was Bruce, RIP.
