Greenland rolling competitive…? Nah….!

Disclaimer - Apologies in advance to the reverential readers in Greenland cyberspace, we're just having some fun here….
I guess the phone call must have gone something like this….


"G'day Rob, Chris here."
"Just noticed the video of you guys doing the rolling thingy"
"If Mark can do it that quick, I bet I can do it quicker…"


A little less Mozart & a little more Rage Against the Machine, the joyous, peaceful, calming rolling pastime, has given way to…... Greenland Wars.…..

Quoted 25 minutes for my first 'Haka Roll', Chris set about the task with Rob down at Watson's Bay yesterday, stopwatch set & running. Nailing it with 5 minutes to spare, after highlighting the achievement with a blatant reference to his watch, he then proceeded to rattle one off on his offside. Not content to stop there, out came the NRS Propulsion Gloves. He ticked off hand roll with the gloves, he then took a shot at the hand roll au naturale, and of course bloody well cracked one second go.
This sort of provocative one-upmanship has escalated the simmering rivalry, so I headed down to the local pool this morning & desperately tried to regain the yellow rolling jersey. Competitive? Me? Nah…..
A dodgy hand roll later & we're all square, although my effort was a little less smooth than the James version. However, and this is a BIG HOWEVER, I was then up for Rob's 'round-the-world-kind-of-imagine-yourself-trying-to-shove-your-finger-up-your-clacker' forward finishing roll, then the forward finish, forward start, paddle over the keel line roll, then the crooked elbow rolly thingy. All highly technical, unbelievably difficult, athletic, Greenland rolls requiring supercharged talent that start with Q have several 'L's' in them and finish with a K. 
Just to put both of us in our places, Rob then fired a few tricky rolls across the bow, which you can see interspersed with Chris & my novice attempts in the video above.
Interestingly, none of the three of us can manage a balanced brace, which is widely espoused as the starting point for anyone to learn these rolls. I think our top-heavy physiques probably make this something of challenge no matter how good we are, so there you go, square pegs in round holes.
This rolling caper is a lot of fun, bring on summer, some warmer water & a chance to really get good at it.
The little skinny elephant in the room is the boat we're using. They're designed for rolling, and certainly make a massive difference. The big fat elephant in the room of course is Rob standing by providing expert instruction, this stuff would be very hard to get your head around without it…..