Christie regains world tour spot with power play

SO there he was, The Offsider, rapt to see Ricardo Christie N New Zealand requalify for the World Surfing League men’s championship tour next year following impressive performances in the opening two legs of the Triple Crown in Hawaii.

Christie’s return to the CT after three years in the lower ranks of the WQS came by making the quarter-finals of the Vans World Cup at Sunset Beach on Friday, days after he’d surfed his way into the finals of the Hawaiian Pro at Haleiwa last month.

The Mahia lad certainly showed superb form in Hawaii this time round, comfortably holding his own against some of the biggest names in surfing. Not only did he take the scalps of several much more highly ranked pros (including world title contender Felipe Toledo), he did so while appearing supremely chillaxed at two of the gnarliest big wave spots on the planet. That both were seriously pumping for each event showed the result was no fluke.

And there’s plenty more to enjoy for couch surfers to enjoy yet with conditions set to turn on for the Billabong Pipeline Masters — which doubles as the third and deciding leg of the Triple Crown and the 11th and final leg of the CT — from tomorrow onwards. Hard for The Offsider to contain his excitement; Pipe has been in insane early-season form and delivered some profoundly mindboggling pits last week.

Sadly, the same can’t be said back here with that golden run of swell through September in to early October having well and truly dried up on his local pointbreak. The slight shift in balance to an El Nino pattern has led to some typically bipolar weather. It was hot enough over the weekend to allow every door and window in the house to be left open at the same time for the first time this summer, suggesting a stinking hot summer is looming. At least a decent lightning and thunder storm broke the monotony by lighting up the moors below his backyard long before the sun rose one morning last week.

Certainly no shortage of weirdness. A kid approached and suggested the Age start running the ‘funnies’ (which The Offsider wasn’t at all adverse to, being to sports reporting what Wile E. Coyote is to catching roadrunner); there was a bizarre spate of whale strandings around the country which included a couple happening within days of each other here in the north; and a bird flew repeatedly into the side of the house as if attempting suicide by self-battery while he took his morning coffee on the back doorstoop with Smokey The House Cat sitting alongside and watching on with detached bemusement.

On a more positive note, it was pleasing to see a small congregation of local Indians playing an impromptu cricket game on the sporting fields across the road on Sunday night. Quite timely considering there’s a report in these very pages on the successful efforts by a couple of local guys to reinvigorate interest in cricket in the Far North. Cricket may get a huge profile in the media but it has been on the very edge of extinction in this neck of the woods. Once upon a time the Far North had its own domestic competition featuring teams from Mangonui, Kaitaia, Kerikeri, Paihia and Kaikohe etc but it slowly and steadily began to wither and die in spite of desperate and manifold attempts to keep the code afloat.

The Offsider wanted to use this opportunity to stress how really, really important it was for local communities to support anyone out there trying to promote summer sport, be it cricket, softball, basketball, touch rugby, or the 7-a-side football tournament the Age sportsbuster has been running for the past 16 years.

Because if folks stop playing social sport over summer altogether, they could well end up at the beach trying surfing.

■ The Offsider is Age sportsbuster Francis Malley. Respond at sports@northlandage.co.nz