We were chatting to Richards at the weekend for a story about Newcastle hosting the opening round of the Australian leg of World Surf League's 2021 championship tour in April.

Eleven-time world title winner Kelly Slater, now aged 48, came up in conversation. Richards wondered whether this could be the last time that Slater competes in Newcastle.

We told him that we'd recently watched the surf documentary, Momentum Generation.

The Momentum Generation was the name given to a group of young surfers who became close mates and all lived together in a house on the beach at Pipeline in Hawaii in the early 1990s.

Among them were Slater and Rob Machado, who went on to have a great rivalry on the world tour.

This rivalry stretched their friendship, especially in one infamous incident at the Pipeline Masters in 1995.

The pair were vying for the world title. They were drawn together in the semi-final. If Machado won, he would win his first world title. If Slater won the semi and then the final, he would claim his third world title.

Richards recalled what happened.

"Rob came out of a barrel and Kelly was paddling out. Kelly sat up and put his hand up to high-five Rob," Mark said.

Should Machado have left his mate hanging? He could have pulled off the wave earlier and paddled back out to be first in the line-up. But he stayed on the wave to high-five Slater. Slater won the semi-final and went on to become world champion.

Although Slater denies it, some believe he deliberately offered the high-five to ensure he was first in line for the next wave. Slater's competitive instincts are legendary. He does anything to win, including psyching out his opponents.

"There's been a million talking points about whether Rob should have passed on the high-five and whether it was a purely instinctive thing that Kelly put his hand up or whether it was just a competitive thing," Richards said.

Asked if he would have accepted the high-five off Slater in that situation, Richards quipped: "I would have run him over".

"I say that jokingly. But I would have flicked out and got the inside [to be first in line for the next wave]. Bear in mind that Kelly is the nicest person in the world, but he was and still is one of the gnarliest competitors on the tour. He's so gnarly, he competes in and out of the water."

Richards said there had never been anyone as good as Slater.

"There's been great competitors, but I don't think there's ever been anyone that good," he said.

"He understood competitive surfing better than anyone. He managed to get into people's heads. He occasionally gets called Yoda because of the Jedi mind tricks he plays on everyone.

"He's amazing. Some university academic could do a thesis on what makes him tick as a competitor - his psychology."

The Momentum Generation had a strong competitive spirit, pushing each other on to bigger waves and greater heights.

We asked Richards whether he had a similar crew.

"It was a different type of crew. I was pushed by surfers from my era like Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew, Shaun Thompson, Cheyne Horan and Dane Kealoha," he said.

"There wasn't a crew like the Momentum Generation, where they were all friends. They were all pretty much the same age and all good friends out of the water - most of them American.

"That was a fairly unique thing in history. Every generation of pro-surfers is pushed by other pro-surfers. Generally they're not your mates and generally they don't come from the same country or city or town as you."

Richards said it must have been "weird for them in a funny way".

"They were best friends and they went out and tried to beat each other in a no-holds-barred kind of way."

Their friendships did, at times, deteriorate. But the group did reunite.

"I think that's the Kelly thing. He used to beat them all the time. I don't think there was a shared win percentage among them," Richards said, with a laugh.

The documentary shows how Machado discarded his competitive spirit and embraced the soul-surfer ethos, making a film called The Drifter about a surfing odyssey.

"I think Rob has always been super cruisy. Rob was a great competitor but he didn't live and breathe competitive surfing.

"Some competitive surfers live and breathe it and study it. Rob wanted to win and compete, but probably not with the same passion as some of these other guys."

In that epic semi-final, Kelly Slater and Rob Machado had gone wave for wave, taking turns, before the notorious high-five.

So was the high-five just an expression of two friends surfing perfect waves together? Or was it a Slater mind trick?

"The jury is probably 50-50 in the surfing world," Richards said.

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