For those who missed the original story, the winner of the women's event - Byron Bay surfer Lucy Small - used her acceptance speech to point out the difference between the female winner's purse ($1500) and male victor ($4000). The disparity was later made up via a sponsor's donation, but the storm continued to rage.

Small's stance attracted national and international media attention - and Reilly and his committee of volunteers became the targets.

Speaking to Inside Back at a beachside café in Dee Why, Reilly wanted to stress he fully supports Small's campaign for equal pay and bodes no ill-feeling towards her. But he feels his club was unfairly portrayed.

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"We were blindsided by the whole thing," he said. "We're a bunch of volunteers with families and jobs and do this for the love of the sport and the people involved in it. It takes hundreds of hours to pull an event like this together.

"The facts are we had 36 male entries and just eight female entries. You need at least 12 for a competition so we had to pull in some under-21 and over-50 surfers just to get the numbers up in the girls. We could have easily walked away from it but were determined to have a women's division.

"This won't stop us. We've had a lot of support from surfers and sponsors and had good discussions with Lucy and other competitors. We really hope all this attention will lead to increased female involvement - in and out of the water."

Small, for her part, has no regrets about calling out the prizemoney disparity and is buoyed by the support she's received. She has called on more women to support events like the MalJam, both by competing and helping out at an organisational level.