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Bronte Boardriders has been a flamboyant player in club surfing over the years. Competitively they can claim responsibility for helping the likes of Rod Kerr, Luke Hitchings, Tom Whittaker, Jessi Miley-Dyer and Nicola Atherton climb on to the world stage. Culturally they are perhaps best known for their Blue Ducks logo, cheeky war cries and the wild, fancy dress themes that are often a feature of their Boardriders Presentations. These days Rugby League legend Andrew Johns pulls on a singlet for the club and has been known to charge Bronte Reef like he’s running at the Queensland forward pack.
This year Bronte made a curious leap into the future by implementing a take on the WSL finals format, to decide the winners of multiple divisions in their Boardriders Club. According to committee member Ryan ‘Whippet’ Clark the club had intended to host eight or nine club rounds in 20202 but had been forced to cancel a number of contests because of poor conditions. Like many clubs (and the WSL), Bronte typically makes allowances for members to drop one or two contests, but the reduced season also made this approach impractical
As the club approached its final contest of the year the ratings were skewed so the committee decided the best way to determine the winners was to borrow a few ideas from the WSL. Curiously, the WSL’s SVP of Tours and Head of Competition, Jessi Miley-Dyer, grew up surfing and competing in Bronte (typically against the boys). Overseeing the new finals format has been an important part of her role.
Meanwhile, anyone who has watched a club title decided at an Australian beach knows it’s on par with any world title showdown for sheer passion and desire to win. So how did the format go down in Bronte? “It was pretty brutal,” explains Ryan. “Like for the guy who was in front, but in saying that everyone kind of accepted that that the bloke could have jumped you in one comp anyway…”
At most clubs the Opens division is the most prestigious and fittingly it was the scene for the biggest showdown on finals day at Bronte. It wasn’t a straightforward adoption of the WSL format, which features the top five surfers. With the field stacked the club elected to make it a surf off between the top ten Opens surfers. So it was 10 v 9 and the winner vs eight and so on all the way down the line. As it transpired the number three surfer, Paddy Power, stormed to victory with a pseudo-Steph Gilmore effort. “I’m stoked that a young bloke came through and got his chance to win it even though he hadn’t been able to go in every comp this year,” insists Ryan.
Ryan was in the top ten but would have needed to win half a dozen heats to claim the final. “It was entertaining… It was a bit of fun for the day and good to experiment with as a spectacle for the boys. Everyone was on the beach and it kept everyone involved more throughout the day.”
Other divisions weren’t quite as exhaustive, most featuring a simple surf-off between the number one and two ranked competitors. “It was good for the juniors to get a taste of man-on-man competition,” confirms Ryan.
Another feature of the day was the ‘Inter-Generational Tag Team’. This one Bronte may be able to claim as their own. Basically it featured groups of surfers competing in a tag team event to represent their generation of the beach.
“Basically the guys you grew up with who were in your year at school or a year either side,” explains Ryan. In WSL terms you might imagine say Mick Fanning, Joel Parkinson, Dean Morrison, Slater (could be in multiple gen’s) and Jeremy Flores against say Medina, Italo, John John, Filipe and Kanoa Igarashi.
Despite relishing the opportunity to try the alternate finals day format, Ryan wasn’t completely hitching his ride to the concept. “I don’t know if we’d do it again, if we had a full season, ” he states honestly. “For a guy or girl who’s had a great year in any Boardriders Club, and then gets pipped on the last day or, you know, the waves go bad that is pretty harsh on them, particularly when guys want to win their Boardriders title so much.”
Love or hate the WSL finals day system it does create an alternative format for competitive surfing on all levels. Perhaps Bronte’s use of the format in a lean year for contests is well justified. Or maybe clubs just want to run a one-off specialty event for the top five finishers in each division that has no bearing on the final winner of the annual trophy – akin to the way way soccer has its separate Premiere League and Champions League competitions. Some feel the WSL could even follow this approach, keeping the top five surf-off as a completely independent ‘Champions’ event and awarding the world title under the traditional point score system. Either way there will always be debate at local and elite level over the best way to determine who the best surfer really is?
