His namesake might well be impressing on the football field, but there’s another Andrew Robertson making waves in a field of his own.
Four years younger than the Hull City footballer hitting the headlines for Scotland, 16-year-old Andrew Robertson is carving out his own bit of history after being selected by the Scottish Surfing Federation (SSF) to represent Scotland in the World Surfing Games to be held in Peru later this month.
The Dundee-born teenager from Largoward, an ex-pupil at St Leonards School in St Andrews, is part of a six-person team flying out to Punta Rocas to take part in the 50th World Games next week, and it has been around 20 years the EuroSurf competition in the early 1990s since Scotland was last able to participate at such an international level.
Mum Karen has long supported her son in competition and revealed that the current Scottish Junior Surf Champion, who is currently studying at the Surf Academy in Cornwall, will be one of over 190 surfers from 32 countries competing between October 24 and November 1.
She added: “This is an amazing opportunity for Andrew and he is absolutely delighted to be given the chance to represent his country at such an amazing surfing event.”
The team was selected based on each competitor’s outstanding performance at the Scottish National Surfing Championships in Thurso in March, with Fraserburgh duo Mark Cameron and Iain Masson, Thurso’s Mark Boyd, Elgin’s Jennifer Wood and Edinburgh’s Phoebe Strachan joining Andrew the youngest competitor on the team on the plane to Peru.
ISA competitions attract the world’s best surfers and past winners have included World Champions Sofia Mulanovich (Peru), Sunny Garcia (Hawaii) and Tom Curren (USA).
The reigning ISA World Games mens champion is Shaun Joubert of South Africa who will be returning as part of the South African team to defend his title.
William Watson, president of the Scottish Surfing Federation, wished Andrew and the team well on their trip and is confident of further Scottish success.
“We’ve seen the sport go from strength to strength in recent years and as such we recognised the need to strengthen our core organisation so we can truly represent Scotland’s surfers and manage every aspect of the sport efficiently,” he explained.
“It’s been a timely process but one that has allowed us to cast a solid foundation on which we can develop the sport.
“The help we’ve had along the way from sportscotland has been tremendous and as such after achieving formal governing body recognition earlier this summer we’ve now been able to work with the European Surfing Federation and the International Surfing Association to bring the sport to a new level.
“Being able to give Scotland’s surfers the opportunity to compete at such an event is an outstanding first step, it’ll be an exciting and busy time ahead in the preparation phase and we look forward to sourcing and working with credible team sponsors.
“The team we have consists not only of Scotland’s elite surfers but they are whom I would consider some of the best ambassadors we could ask for on our World Games debut.
“I know they’ll do us all, the sport and Scotland proud.”