April away to a cracking start
SO there he was, The Offsider, stoked to see April get off to a cracking start with a flawless swell hitting his backyard pointbreaks on Tuesday. For his favourite time of year, autumn hadn’t been particularly prolific by any stretch of the imagination, with March failing to deliver on the promise hinted at over the last two weeks of summer.
Indeed, most of last month had been filled with northerly winds — although that bought some much needed rain which would have been a relief for many in the area, from farmers to those whose rugby and league seasons had got away to a preternatural start. But hopes remained high that a pattern of clean groundswell would settle in over the new few weeks.
Offshore, The Offsider was excited to see a new world surfing championship tour get under way in fair to middling waves at Snapper Rock yesterday, and also congratulated the affable Grant ‘Twiggy’ Baker N South Africa for winning the WSL’s Big Wave Tour title earlier in the week. Impressive being his third win in six years and all while in his 40s: “. . . and that’s probably something that is abnormal in a sport like surfing which is usually dominated by youngsters,” the man himself admitted. Go the Old Fellas!
The Offsider had exploited a spectacular image — one of the best he’s ever seen and
that’s a lot of surf shots — of Baker knifing the drop on a giant peak at Nazare in Portugal to promote his upcoming Kaitaia MetalFest 2 event in a recent column.
Enough about surfing and more on MetalFest later . . . these were weird days indeed. Even more disconcerting than seeing the ants heading straight past the sugar bowl and going for the pig scraps and cat biscuits, was hearing whispers borne on the winds of the decaying summer that some of his old teammates were sleeping with the enemy!
Admittedly, the pre-season for the town’s football team had got off to an uncertain start. As president of the body governing the sport in the area, and a key figure in getting senior football up and running in the area upon his arrival 16 years ago, The Offsider had to accept some of the responsibility for the strange level of flatness which had carried over from last season.
It had been particularly notable in the NAKFA Sevens tournament which he’d founded in 2003 and which had been run every year since. A sellout success every summer to the point of having to reluctantly turn teams away most years, interest towards the last two NAKFAs had begun to dwindle dramatically.
It all felt like something that had run its course and fears that apathy would carry over into this year’s winter campaign were realised. Not helping him approach the looming season with confidence was the state of the home fields. Having gained an unwelcome reputation as the worst surface in the entire province, they had suffered even more under the summer heatwave, which only helped edge the senior herd closer to the lip of the abyss.
But while you could understand someone leaving because they were too weary, too old, too unfit, under pressure to spend more time with their family or work on weekends, etcetera, to go and play for the opposition was unfathomable; they call them Broken Arrows in the military.
Always one for the knee-jerk reaction, The Offsider found it hard to shake off a sense of betrayal. Initially he imagined the coaches from neighbouring hamlets hunched over and cackling as they left a trail of cake crumbs to tempt the less resilient into a warm, lit gingerbread cottage while night fell on a cold and unfamiliar forest.
But he shook it off by taking consolation from something uttered by the late Robert Muldoon, who’d once famously observed that anyone willing to go to the other side did both parties a favour.
■ The Offsider is Age Malley. Respond at sports@northlandage.co.nz
sportsbuster Francis