Sophomore Slump At Snapper

The opening Challenger Series event of the season is wrapped and in the books after a week of playful, good enough, bluewater peelers at Snapper Rocks. Taken out by Sammy Pupo for the men and India Robinson the women.

The rejigged tour puts Snapper in May. The shift from late summer to May is significant. May is practically its own season in the sub-tropics. On land, the tea-tree (Melaleuca sp.) is in full flower and the showy, cream-coloured blossoms fill the air with a thickly-honeyed scent, as evocative as the pungent smell of Gudang Garams in Indonesia. The day begins and ends with the screeching cacophony of nectar eating birds, primarily Rainbow Lorikeets. Clans and peoples of the Bundjalung nation know it as mullet (jullum) season. Contra the Northern Hemisphere, as we approach the winter solistice, food chains are at their seasonal maxima.

But the swell angles change too. The cyclone season is over. The monsoon trough has retreated, tropical depressions become a rarity, the tradewind belt shifts north. The Tasman Sea comes to life meaning that swells shift southward. All of which we saw last week. The famous bank was still there but, while an hour south the surf was six foot everyday, by the time the swell had got around Cape Byron and Point Danger it was half the size and much, much weaker.

Crowds were light on through the week and the field seemed weaker and less exciting than last year - lacking the novelty of 'fresh faces' like Ramzi Boukhiam, Nolan Rapoza, Joshe Faulkner, and Caity Simmers. The CT'ers failed to fire, for the most, apart from those who seemed genuinely frothed on ripping into playful Snapper, chiefly Rio Waida and Joao Chianca.

After enduring weeks of late-season east swell through April, the Snapper lineup fell quiet during early May, contestants relying on heavily refracted south swell that ran along the less organised inner banks (Photo WSL/Shield)

2019 was the last time I attended Snapper, and it felt like a lifetime ago. It was pre-pandemic, when Snapper was still the opening event of the year. The entire comp was held at D-bah and the beach was packed daily despite the mediocre surf.

The latest tourism propaganda must have got to me; a Finals Day site visit seemed in order. I'm a worst case scenario for the tourism suits. Going up the Goldy is visiting the work site for me. I took a packed lunch and thermos of coffee for a zero dollar spend.

A moderate crowd swelled Rainbow Bay - enough to fill the cafes and keep the deep fryer's humming but less than the day at the Superbank a couple of days before last New Year's Eve. The surf looked much more energetic in real life compared to the webby. Lots of waves going unridden and the sense of scale which had been so compressed through the screen was greatly enlarged. The area between the classic behind the rock takeoff and where most surfers sat was vast.

Finals day crowds gather at Snapper (WSL/Shield)

It was so much harder to decipher the rides from beachside viewing. In the Semis, a Steph Gilmore speed run through Little Marley/Outside Rainbow punctuated by seamless hits and carves easily looked the 7+ score required to overtake India Robinson yet was adjudged a 5-something. Also, the crowd on the beach was curiously disengaged from the surfing action. Apart from rowdy contingents of coaches/friends/team members, such as the Californian 2 per centers led by Kolohe Andino.

After that victory, India Robinson came up the sand with little fanfare while a crowd mobbed Gilmore on the beach, including an elderly couple from Cairns. Here for the spectacle and in all likelihood spending generously - a dream for the suits. The only surfer in the draw they knew was Steph. They finally got their photo and left the beach.

Steph illuminating the Snapper lineup (WSL/Shield)

I asked Challenger Series surfer and 2% principal Kolohe Andino what the Australian surfing public needed to know about this movement. Andino, a much bigger man in real life than appears on webcast, hooted the winning ride from 2 percenter Sawyer Lindblad and, when the dance steps and high fiving finally died down told me: “It's just a San Clemente version of Chapter 11. It's not a big deal. We're just having a lot of fun; we're trying really hard in the comps. Trying to stick together and hopefully get some momentum."

How did it start?

“Basically we are going to make a movie at the end of the year and thats how it started.”

OK, so how did it translate from making a movie into a pro surfing movement? They're two different things aren't they?

“It just seemed everyone was really excited for the movie and the boys started sticking together on the regional series and they all started doing really good cheering each other on - almost like a Brazilian Storm. We're picking up other people too now, we've got Eli [Hanneman, from Maui]) and the Geiselman's [Florida]. We're just having fun, lovin' everyone!”

“We do this every day at home so why wouldn't we do it on the road?”

Kolohe and Jett Schilling bro down (WSL/Miers)

As someone who has seen Snapper open the Championship Tour to it now opening the Challenger Series, how do you perceive the difference?

“Everyone misses it on Tour. Having a wave that was so high performance start the tour was huge. But...it is what it is. The WSL is the only game in town so we're just gonna enjoy it, have fun and try our best.”

Would you like to see it come back as a CT event?

“Oh, absolutely! Everyone would love it to."

(Loud hoots and screams as Lindblad beat Sally Fitz, with Andino giving a credible Aus accent: “She just beat the little Aussie battler!”)

Note: In real life was Sally Fitzgibbon absolutely shredding.

Victorious India Robinson throws a fan to the sky (WSL/Miers)

'New' Coolangatta is where the tourism suits pitch their marketing. The glitzy high rises sprouting up over the bulldozed cinder block or fibro flats; the fancy new cafes and boujie restuarants.

That's fine but my tastes run to Old Coolangatta. There's no finer living representative of Old Coolangatta than Tommy Peterson, brother of the best to ever do it in the 'Gatta, Michael Peterson.

Tommy was in the pole corner spot in the Rainbow Bay Surf Club, with an expert punters eye view of the action. This was during the Semi-Finals, Jett Schilling was comfortably ahead of Sammy Pupo.

“Anyone caught your eye?” I asked Tommy.

“Yeah, this Pupo kid,” he growled, "I put fucking twenty bucks on him at 5-1 for a win yesterday."

Sammy P shakes his money maker (WSL/Shield)

Tommy settled into his speciality: a classic Coolangatta roast. All delivered in light-hearted jest of course.

He took aim at Bug's thinning hair, apparently a great place to view the sunrise or sunset through due to the lack of interfering follicles.

Sixty years he'd known Bugs and in that time he'd never seen his wallet: “Probably still got his fucken school lunch money in it."

His expertise on pro surf gambling had come from his Mum once owning a racehorse - named Gunsyn - in a third share with the butcher and grocer.

Tommy's role: “Go down the paddock every afternoon and give Gunsyn a bottle of beer."

The next fifteen minutes or so was unprintable magic.

Old Coolangatta. None of which will make the tourism pitches and dies with Tommy's generation.

Tommy was on the money of course and got the W, along with Sammy Pupo who lit up the wonky walls with edgey cuts and tail high airs. Hawaiian ex-CTer Imaikalani deVault missed out on the sets he needed to answer back. India Robinson won an even more one-sided Final when Sawyer Lindblad couldn't find a clean wall to hit.

With the forecast for Sydney looking grim and Haliewa off the calendar, Snapper may well the high point of the Challenger Series. The same thing happened last year so once more we will get the same paradox. Qualifiers chosen for their abilities in QS-level surf facing down Pipeline and Sunset to start the year.

// STEVE SHEARER