Cronulla's Connor O'Leary has kept his re-qualification dreams alive in Europe as the QS 10,000 EDP Billabong Pro Ericeira continued to deliver upsets with the swell built to pump solid surf down the Ribeira d'Ilhas point in Portugal.
Three surfers with strong links to the shire, Stuart Kennedy, Chris Zaffis and O'Leary, kept the Australian flag flying high as the Brazilian storm faltered in Ericeira to let an Australian one brew going into the quarter-finals.
Good mate Kennedy took on O'Leary in the third quarter-final and while the two are traveling mates on land, in the line-up the fight was real.
Unfortunately O'Leary could not quite find the same rhythm he had through the event. Kennedy on the other hand just kept scoring the long rights, perfect for his point break style of riding.
"That was a pretty important heat for me especially going into Hawaii," Kennedy said.
"It's unfortunate to have to beat Connor but he's got me the last four or five times and I feel like he's going to get back on tour pretty easily so I'm not feeling too bad."
After finishing fifth behind Brazilian winner Samuel Pupo, O'Leary now sits in eighth place in the WSL qualifying ranks going into the 10,000-point Hawaiian Pro at Sunset Beach and Vans World Cup. He just needs to maintain his position to re-qualify for 2020.
Meanwhile, O'Leary's former Cronulla High School surf team are warming up for another successful year in 2020 with new corporate support.
On the back of some excellent results this year the students were rewarded for their efforts, not only for their results but for the way they conducted themselves on competition days with outstanding sportsmanship and enthusiasm.
Even though surfing is normally an individual sport, teacher Bevan Gosby has encouraged the students with the notion that they are part of a team and to positively support each other.
To further promote this team mentality, Carve and Triple Bull surf shop came together to supply them with new team jackets to keep them warm on competition days. They also designed a new team logo that will carry on the strong tradition of surfing at the school.
Cronulla made a huge impact at this year's Newcastle Surfest High Schools Teams Challenge with their teams placing second and fourth from a field of more than 50 teams across NSW.
Along with some outstanding individual results in this year's regional and state events Cronulla students are putting the beach side school back on the map.
This mornings surfing conditions were perfect for Cronulla surfers as the 3-4 ft south swell cleaned up under some nice clean offshore winds and an incoming tide.
The last few days have been pretty average with onshore winds and lumpy swells making it tough to find a decent wave.The good news is the banks are starting to look pretty good with some nice rips and gutters all up and down the beach.
The bad news is the swell is forecast to slowly drop into the weekend until a slight southerly on Saturday morning gives the 1-2 ft swell a little kick back to 3-4 ft for the start of the new week.
Winds will be predominately offshore for the early mornings with a mid morning nor-easter kicking in so all those school kids should get up for the early if you want to get the best out of the week.
In Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka , Australia's Mitch Parkinson has put on an outstanding performance to win the 2019 So Sri Lanka Pro World Surf League Qualifying Series 3000 event in clean three-to-four foot surf. In the biggest win of his career, Parkinson dominated every heat he surfed with an amazing display of aerial surfing.
Gold Coast local Parkinson made it to the final with clutch performances all event, posting perfect and excellent scores in the final minutes of his heats to progress to the next round. In the Final, however, he did all the damage early, posting a perfect 10-point ride with his first wave. His second ever, the perfect score came from a huge, full rotation 'alley-oop' which he immediately backed up with a 9.17 for a huge air-reverse. This left his opponent Oney Anwar (IDN) chasing a two-wave combination of 19.17 for the lead.
