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Irish Team in Portugal

This month has been an exceptional month in Irish surfing history. At the recent ISA World Surfing Games held in Cascais, Portugal, the Irish Surf Team finished in it's highest place ever, finishing 15th in front of teams like Israel and Barbados. This being the first time Ireland has finished higher than Israel.

The Irish Open team had it's best result ever with every one of its' 4 members making it through at least one round. In the first round two of the Irish surfers, Keith O'Brien (T-Bay) and David O'Donnell (Strandhill) came head to head with pro surfer Dino Andino. At one stage the Irish Boys even had the surf star in 3rd position. However in the closing moments of the 20 minute heat Dino managed to to get a 7 point wave and move into 1st position. Both Keith and Dino progressed from that heat.

In the other open heats, Californian raised Joe McNulty made it through to the 3rd round of the repercharge only to be narrowly defeated by Lee Bartlett and sent packing. Colin O'Hare (Strandhill) and David O'Donnell also made it into the 3rd round of the repercharge where they finally met there end.

The Irish Longboarder, Ronan Breen from T-Bay also had a great contest making it through the first round. Unfortunately he got knocked out here and had to resort to the repercharge where he finally got eliminated. Andrew Byrne (T-Bay) represented Ireland as Kneeboarder and also progressed through a few rounds.

The junior also put up a good fight with Brendan Gannon progressing al the ways through to the 4th round of the repercharge. Other excellent performances came from Allister Meaney, Steven Conwell and Conn McDermott

The true stars of the Irish team had to be the BodyBoarders, with 18 year old Brian McCauley (Portrush) making it al the ways through to the final of the plate event but unfortunately letting the pressure get the better of him. However this was understandable since he was surfing against people who have been his idols over his surfing career. In the end Brian finished up in 6th place, not bad for an Irish boy. This was a great achievement for the lad, especially after the English Managers comments at the opening ceremony stating that our BodyBoarders were crap, well in your face Colin Wilson, ya prick!

Well in the end the trip was considered a success and to be honest, "we all had a fucking ball".

National Championships - Easkey delivers again.

Last weekend (Nov 14th & 15th) in Easkey, Co. Sligo saw the running off of the Irish Nationals, a contest that has been postponed three times this year already. The contest with 45 entries was held in 4-5ft Easkey left with the final round being held on the Sunday in less inviting conditions.

The Open event saw the surprise eliminating of 2 time Irish champion Darren Twomey (T-Bay) in the 1/4 finals. He had a shocker of a draw with Colin O'Hare and Andy Hill in the same heat as him. In the end it was a three way tie for first place and Darren lost out on wave count, the closest possible scenario. Other T-Bay surfers included Keith O'Brien, Allister Strachan, Philly Byrne, Jamie Byrne, Colin Moran and Andrew Byrne. In the second round there was a close encounter between Keith and Philly, with Philly almost taking the second place and advancing. Unfortunately his last wave was just not quite enough despite the cheers from the shore. By the semi finals only four T-Bay surfers remained in the event, Keith O'Brien, Gary Butler, Andrew Byrne and David Blount. However only one of these would progress into the final, Keith.

The final, held on the Sunday afternoon in some what difficult conditions was close. All 4 surfers were within catching distance of each other. Keith took the lead early and maintained it through out the half hour final until the final minute when Colin O'Hare stroked into a walling left and whacked it the whole way in for a 7, enough to jump him from 3rd to 1st. And that was the last wave of the heat. So Colin took the win and Keith yet again had to settle with 2nd (fuck'n sick of 2nd).

The longboard category was dominated by the T-Bay surfers the whole way through the contest and in the end it was the big man, Ronan Breen who took the win with one his most impressive performances, if only he had performed like that in Portugal! Rony, T-Bay local and officially Irelands' best Longboarder was pleased with his win and skipped up the beach with joy. Afterwards I talked to Rony and he had this to say, "I'm having a fuck'n ball...."

The other main event was the BodyBoarding, but since T-Bay doesn't produce any and there is nothing to talk about we'll just skip to the results. However, one must note that Martin bet the world no.6, cool ehh.

Up the West and feck the rest!!!

On a recent trip up the west coast, myself, Ronan Breen, David Blount and Martin Cullinane discover what surfing in Ireland is really about. We began our journey with an early start, the alarm went off for 5am and the trip began. Our journey down was one of doubt. You see the charts didn't look the best but we said we would just take a chance, in fact we had nothing better to do. After picking Martin up in Limerick we proceeded on our quest.

As soon as we arrived in Lahinch, a small town on the west coast of Ireland we saw exactly what we expected, flatness. Our hopes were slim, our moral was low but yet we decided to cruise on. We arrived at our destination around 8.30, as we descended the steep roads we say white water, now they say that if you see white water at the reef then it's going to be surfable. We were just totally stoked to see waves. We flew down the road as fast as the Jetta could take us, a bunch of men on a mission.

Arriving at the car park we say a set, looked 3 ft and had good shape to it. We were out there as fast as our stiff legs could scramble across the rocks. The best thing about surfing here is that the paddle out is just a buzz in itself. You're just so amped to get out there that the paddle seams endless, yet the butterflies just can't help engulf your stomach. As I paddled after Dave, who was about 50m in front of me, he turned and paddled into what had looked 3ft from the shore. In fact it was overhead and grinding. Daves first waves was a little bit of a disaster, a good wake-up call though. The surf ended up to be about 4-5ft and super fun. We surfed for about 3 hours that morning, until our feet were frozen solid and our hands deformed from the cold. By the end of the session the tide had gone super low due to the full moon at that time. This left a wedging end section that was often over head and breaking in knee deep water. What a great session.

After that we headed into the nearby town for some lunch. We found a local pub and warmed our souls with tea and soup. We were ready for another session. At this stage the tide had started pushing, no longer was it going silly on the inside, instead there was just great walls to bash all the way down the line. Another great session, and just the 4 of us and 2 other guys out there, they weren't even locals.

We left the west that evening happy men, tired from our days surfing and just stoked off our heads that we had scored, the best thing was that it wasn't even expected that it would be that good, Neptune had blessed us, we had scored.