Everyone loves a happy ending, so let’s keep our fingers crossed for Australia’s favourite tradie battler, Callum Robson, as he comes off an amazing win at the WSL Pipeline Challenger last weekend and prepares for an all-or-nothing performance at the Newcastle CS in a couple of weeks, hoping to force his way back onto the championship tour.
After a lacklustre season on the 25-26 Challenger Series, the boy from Evans Head smashed his way through everything Pipe threw at him, including an onshore, heaving final against a rampaging Morgan Cibilic, world number two Griffin Colapinto and CS ratings leader Eli Hanneman, to rocket up the rankings from 34 to 11, just one spot short of requalification for the WCT. The good news is that Cal is fired up and showed at Pipe that he can find keepers in a very messy ocean. The bad news is that last time he was in Newcastle, for the first event of the CS last year (for some strange reason Newy gets two events this season) he finished a miserable 49th.
But Cal Robbo, like Sally Fitzgibbons, his counterpart battler on the women’s CS, has become used to adversity, since the wheels fell off his pro surfing dream back in early ‘24, when he failed to make the midseason cut. Prior to that, he had finished eighth on the Challenger in 2021, gaining him a spot on the championship tour for 2022, where in his rookie year he finished second (to world champ Toledo) at Bells and at season’s end was 10th in the rankings. Things kind of went south from there.
Cal dug out the tools and went back to work with his dad to finish the carpentry apprenticeship he had started straight out of school. And a funny thing happened on the way to the job site. He became a celebrity. Everyone knew he was a great surfer, a mix of finesse and brutal Aussie power, a new age Simon Anderson, but who knew he was a TV natural! Suddenly Cal was everywhere, the face of a tradie insurance mob, a ladder company and of Bonsoy. He was surfing’s everyman good bloke.
Of course Callum Robson was more than just born lucky, he was a smart operator. He knew he couldn’t grind it out on the qualifiers without developing a career option. And now, he’s almost back on top.
In a Pipe event which had mixed conditions but some standout sessions and performances, the two epic Aussies fought it out for the crown, and you had to feel sorry for Morgan Cibilic, another future world title contender who, like Cal, has had to battle his way back towards requalification after finishing 5th in his rookie season on the championship tour. Morgs surfed brilliantly throughout the event, but at the crunch he couldn’t match Cal, who took the second CS win of his career, the first being the Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro in 2022, when his new sponsor handed him the trophy.
Finals day for the women followed a similar pattern to that of the men, with solid, clean Pipe and Backdoor on offer for the first half and tricky onshore junk for the second. Strangely though, the women didn’t really take advantage of the good conditions while they lasted, with only six quarter finals qualifiers scratching into double figure heat scores.
The quarters were ragged affairs in a windblown rising swell, with Aussies Bella Nichols, Sierra Kerr and Sophie McCulloch all bowing out, leaving world champ Molly Picklum to carry the flag. But even Pickles looked out of sorts, scratching into the semis on a pair of threes. The most interesting part of the semis was the gutsy Backdoor backhand surfing of Israeli Anat Lelior, who first flagged that the gal can really surf with a third at Ericiera earlier in the season, when she became the first Israeli to make a WSL final.
Whereas the men’s finalists were given the opportunity of deciding whether to surf or wait, the girls were just sent out into the pounding mess. Took me back to the ‘70s, it did, when if the onshore wind got strong enough to blow sand in the eyes of the judges in their tent, it was time to send out the women.
Pickles hoovered up a 7.00 in the opening minutes, but appeared to lose interest and couldn’t find a backup, finishing third behind Erin Brooks and winner Gabriela Bryan, which, not for the first time, made me wonder about the wisdom of allowing WCT surfers to compete in the Challenger. Sure, they’re good box office, but in this instance Anat from Israel barely got a set wave and finished last behind the world numbers 1, 3 and 8.
So where does this leave us, going into the CS closer at Merewether next month? In the men’s, only Hawaii’s Eli Hanneman has locked his WCT spot, but it would take a train to stop Aussies George Pittar, Oscar Berry and Morgan Cibilic from qualifying, while at least one of Liam O’Brien, Jacob Willcox and Callum Robson should make the cut and be at Bells in April.
In the women’s, old trouper Sally Fitz locked in her spot with a middling performance at Pipe, and may well be our only female qualifier, with India Robinson (10) and Sophie McCulloch (12) needing a huge finish at Newie. Meanwhile, watch out for Israel’s Anat, now just two spots from making the WCT cut.
