THE Portland Boardriders Club hosted international level surfers at a local event on Saturday as part of a film evening to raise funds.

World Surf League contenders Liam O’Brien and Sophie McCulloch joined other local surf enthusiasts in celebrating the local wave scene through film.

24-year-old O’Brien, who has family locally and spent some time at Portland South Primary School, said it was a great opportunity to support the local community.

“It was a really good night and I was glad I could make it,” he said.

“Mick (Walder), is the new president of the club and he asked if I could come down and it just matched up that I was here to visit family anyway.”

O’Brien featured one of his films, Wanderer, as well as bringing a board to raffle off and some other key prizes to help raise funds for the club.

The funds are going towards developing some of the infrastructure at local surf spots as well as hosting competitions throughout next year.

“It was a cool night and Mick asked if I could show my film which I released earlier in the year, I showed it again Saturday and everyone seemed to enjoy it, or at least they told me they did anyway,” O’Brien said.

“But it was cool to see the local films that people had made too, I really enjoyed those. One of them featured the likes of Adam Robertson, who was someone I looked up to when I was younger, and still do, so that was great.

“I managed to get a few surfs in when I was down too, got a few waves and ticked off what I wanted.”

As for the World Surf League season, while O’Brien said he didn’t feel like it was his best year on the board, he was happy with what he managed to accomplish and is building towards a bigger and better 2024.

“It was a good year, I didn’t do exceptionally well but I made it past the cut which was my main focus and to learn as much as possible,” he said.

“My best result was in El Salvador, I finished third so that was one of my best parts of this year.”

In order to make the cut, O’Brien had to earn his place past world surfing legends such as Kelly Slater, as well as competing against the world’s best in Gabriel Medina, Griffin Colapinto and Filipe Toledo.

“It’s funny when you grow up and start surfing you aspire to be a pro and at the top but in reality it can be quite a slow process, so once you get there it isn’t as surreal as your younger self would have though; but, it’s always so enjoyable to be able to watch those top tier surfers and then even better to compete against them.

“I’m so likely in my job though even just travelling to the places we get to go to is amazing, on the planes can be a bit much but it’s all about having the right perspective and remembering we’re so lucky to be on tour.

“Being on tour also means we get to go to some pretty remote locations because that’s where the best surf is so we see some amazing stuff.

“We went to Tahiti this year and that was so cool to compete in and really unique. The surf is away from the land so everyone is out on boats to watch.”

O’Brien will now have a small amount of down time before the 2024 season begins on January 29 at Pipe Pro in Hawaii.