Hey there retro rippers, how good was the 2009 Paul Baxter Shield! We were greeted with small consistent waves, offshore winds for most of the day and no clouds in sight.

The best bank on the beach ensured we had something to work with throughout the entire day, DJ Bandit kept up the tunes and there was plenty of food on the BBQ.

There were also a number of Elvis sightings, borat was nowhere to be seen but I’m pretty sure a few of his ugly ill-fashioned cousins made an appearance. As for the large white nude yeti sighting – we tracked its footprints and can confirm that it definitely did have two left feet.

The white team leapt out to an early start, followed at the other end by the yellow team who even after spiking Brad’s morning coffee with some red bull and Pseudo-ephedrine, were unable to capitalise on his nervy energy.

Hayden and Franko had a few nice waves in the first heat with some deep gouging cutties and many of the grommets proved that despite never actually seeing a single or twin fin before, they were up to the task of sticking it to the older folk.

Hank, Harry and Jackson amongst others a managed to throw a few nice little snaps into the mix; and one of the best of the day was Karl’s wave for the blue team that linked a couple of smooth clean turns together to score very well with the judges. Plattsy too put in a few stylish turns to help the blue team up the ladder as did the banana bender Max ‘the lady luck axe’ Deluca, making his guest appearance from the sunshine coast for the red team.

Many of us saw lobsters, being reminded the hard way about the different “performance capabilities” (i.e. none) that some of the old dinged up boats have compared to our shiny new creations from Samurai and MG. Indeed big Tony was seen riding his board down the mines on one wave only to get it wedged in the starboard porthole of the Hereward wreck.

Early heats saw the white team in the lead followed by the red team, then blue and yellow. The red team surfed consistently well in each heat of the day and were unlucky to end up with a win after edging out the white team in the final heats. It was however the blatant salary cap breaching, steroid abusing, judge corrupting blue team that snuck in on 564 points, over the red team on 562.5 points – oh so close after ant entire day of surfing mayhem. The yellow team finished at the foot of the ladder, they were nothing if not consistent, even late charges by Koolis, George Black, Luke Twitchings etc were not quite enough to lift them out of the doldrums.

So congratulations must go to the following:
• The Blue team, captained by Tom North (from his bed for the first heat)
• Karl Richards for winning the Sean Sweet Manoeuvre of the day
•  Steve ‘Elvis/Evil Kenevel’ Welch for his costume effort and for bagging the custom made surfboard from Paul Finch at Samurai Surfboards.
• Kirra Lowlett-Richards for being the best dressed grooviest out-there young chicky babe on the sand and at the Sands Hotel afterwards
• Hayden for bagging the free nights accommodation at the Swiss Grand Hotel
• That guy who won the raffle for the MG surfboard thinking that the raffle was for a frozen chook

Thanks to Dave and all the staff at the Sands Hotel for all of their awesome support each year. Thanks too to Samurai surfboards and MG Surfboards. Also to Surfection, Triple-X wetsuits, O&E, Australian Surfing Life, Hive Swimwear, Localmotion, Dune and Surf Dive’n’ski.

We hope everyone had a good day – it certainly looked like that was the case and we look forward to seeing the same good times at the 2010 Paul Baxter Shield.

Check out some of the photos up in the Gallery section