A ridiculously strong Maroubra United team headed south to Bombo last Saturday (December 10) to compete in event seven of the Nudie Australian Boardriders Battle Series. This leg of the event saw the 13 best NSW Boardriding Clubs (South of the Sydney Harbour Bridge) pitted against each other to battle it out for a spot in the prestigious National Final that will be held at Newcastle in February. With only 3 final spots available for southern NSW clubs it was always going to be a tough ask, but we genuinely believe we have the fire power to match it when any other club out there.

The nudie Australian Boardriders Battle Series involves more than 60 of Australia’s best Board ridding clubs and the event is surfed over 3 disciplines including Opens Skins, Female and a Tag Team event. It is officially sanctioned by the World Surf League (WSL), which allows Australian WSL Championship Tour surfers (men and women) the opportunity to represent their local boardriders club at respective state qualifying events and the national final.

Conditions on the day were extremely challenging with the onshore surf hovering in the solid 6ft range. Maroubra got off to a great start with a Blake Thornton win in his skins heat, a second place in the open Women’s heat (Emma McGuigan) and comprehensive Team victory in heat 1 of the tag team event!

Sitting in a very strong overall position we got off to another great start in our stacked Semi Final of the tag team and were actually winning the heat with less than 5 minutes remaining. Each team then had the chance for their Power Surfer to get one last wave each and it come down to that, as the highest score would be enough to win the heat.  In the end Bondi and Cronulla both managed to get great scores in the dying stages and unfortunately we moved from 1^st position down to 3^rd place meaning we didn’t progress to the Final……Unfortunately this put us out of the running for a top 3 position on the day and therefore missing out on a spot in the final at Newcastle.

Congratulations go out to Bondi Boardriders who eventually went on to claim the event.  Jordi Watson (Culburra) claimed the Milwaukee Heavy Duty Hack award for a series of incredible and consistent performances over the duration of the Teams division

As disappointed as we were on the day not progress further, we are extremely proud of all representatives for Maroubra United including surfers, reserves, squad members, parents, supporters and organisers…..Sometimes you get a little lucky and sometimes things just don’t fall in to place, but one thing you can’t fault is the effort these guys are putting in to represent Maroubra!  In the last 18 months we have achieved some great things including being the current u/18 Kirra Team’s Champions, Kirra Teams Open Champions (runners up) and the 2015 Covered Tag team  Champions!

The final standings finished like this.

Event Seven Results:

To find out more information, please visit www.australianboardridersbattle.com and a little clip of the day’s action can be found here http://www.mysurf.tv/detail/videos/nudie-partnership/video/5245443344001/nudie-australian-boardriders-battle—series-iv-event-7—kiama?autoStart=true