By PHIL JARRATT
IF YOU’RE not interested in the World Surf League, you’d better skip straight to Benny or Ronnie. Sorry, but it’s actually quite interesting at the moment, and not just because King Kelly is finally crumbling.
The fact that there are more surfers currently out injured than I have ever seen before has opened the door for a handful of exciting (and excitable) wildcards, and as Julian Wilson found to his cost at Margaret River last weekend, you can never under-estimate a wildcard because they have nothing to lose.
The Drug Aware Margaret River Pro was Julian’s to win, the form surfer of the event whose driving carves in the double-overhead conditions seemed to grow in power and precision as he streaked towards the final.
Julian was almost clinical in his crushing of Joel Parkinson in his semi-final. The waves were made for Parko, but the tour veteran seemed stunned by Wilson’s wham-bam start, posting two solid scores in the first five minutes, and he spent the rest of the heat sitting somewhere outside the break, waiting for a miracle that never came.
Kaui’s Sebastian Zietz is an incredibly exciting surfer to watch, but he never showed much grey matter as a competitor in his three years on tour before getting bumped off last season. Now, back as an injury wildcard, “Seabass” is on fire, sitting at number two in the rankings at the end of the Australian season, and if he gets a few more wildcard entries, he’ll almost certainly requalify for 2017.
After dispatching Brazil’s Italo Ferreira in the semi-finals, Seabass elected to wait out the 20-minute break before the final in the chilly water, not wanting to break the spell he seemed to have over the main break rights. Not one to be put off by mind games, Wilson took his time in getting out to the line-up, then went to town in much the same way he’d been doing all contest, back to back precision rides putting him into an almost unassailable position. But then Seabass pulled a massive rail-grab cutback in the pocket and scored a nine plus, another classic example of how the judges this season prefer a holy cow moment to a well-surfed whole wave.
Julian held onto the lead through a nail-biting 20-minute lull, but then Zietz pulled another gouge with two minutes to go, and that’s all she wrote. Good luck to the happy chappy from the Garden Isle, but I had it going the other way, and I haven’t got my hometown glasses on in saying that. Call me old-fashioned, but I still think good surfing is about riding the wave, not using it to manufacture a single spectacular photo op.
The new thinking is not just confined to the WSL, nor just to shortboarding. At the Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing on a couple of occasions I was surprised to see high scores rewarding surfers who threw spray with a massive cutback, only to lose their line and miss out on long performance sections ahead, while others who read the wave to perfection were scored down.
But back to Margarets, where it was great to see Tyler Wright take the prize away from the incredible Courtney Conlogue, who looks to be on her way to a title. I’m a big fan of all the Wrights, and Tyler thoroughly deserved her win in WA. It was a great boost for her at a time when her family is going through hell as they await news on the full extent of big brother Owen’s head injuries. They breed ‘em tough down Culburra way, and we all hope Owen will be back on track soon.
While Owen Wright’s condition is the most serious of the surfers on the injury list, veteran Bede Durbidge also has a big question mark hanging over his competitive future, with complications from a fractured pelvis sustained at Pipeline late last year, where Wright also came to grief. Rookie Jack Freestone might not make Rio next month and Brazilian Jadson Andre is also in doubt.
With Mick Fanning out for the foreseeable future (maybe forever) and Taj Burrow also declaring stumps after Fiji, there will be plenty of opportunities for more Stu Kennedy and Leo Fioravanti clones to come out of the woodwork. The wildcards are coming! No one is safe.
Danger in the ‘hood
Not to be a whinger, what with the new council barely comfortable in their seats in the chamber, but I am just a little surprised at how nonchalantly my neighbourhood has been transformed into an accident waiting to happen.
Okay, we were sent a circular and had advance warning that William Street, Noosaville, would be closed for six weeks while erosion issues were rectified at Kev’s Corner – and about time too – and of course I understand that things like flashing lights and warning signs are expensive items, but frankly I’m astounded that this narrow one-way street has been allowed to become two-way with zero warning signage.
With a backpacker hostel and dozens of holiday rentals along it, William Street has to remain open to resident and local traffic, but at the moment the only signage to indicate that you can now enter the street from Weyba Road is one put up by the backpacker hostel that conveniently cuts off your view of oncoming traffic as you enter it. Since the oncoming traffic is frequently the hostel’s own bus, this is a bit of a problem.
Councillors please discuss.
