Perennial finalist a class act for 40 years

When the shearing world farewelled Taihape farmer, contractor and former top competitor Ray Alabaster last week, it was very much in the spirit of the industry and the sport.
His casket rested, draped in the many ribbons he'd won in a 40-year competition career, on stand three of the shearing pavilion where the prominent annual Hawke's Bay competition had been held just five days before he died on February 2 after a battle with cancer.
A crowd of about 700 from around the country sat and stood in the hot afternoon sun, looking down from the embankment.
Born in Raetihi on February 10, 1945, Ray spent almost all of his life in shearing, most publicly as one of the greatest shearers to reach the Golden Shears open final without winning the coveted title.
He had barely started shearing when he went to Masterton with his workmates for the first Shears in 1961. He once recalled the others were all older, and the night before he was expected early on in the junior heats they had had a hard night. Camped at Mawley Park across the Waipoua River from the War Memorial Stadium, his workmates woke up, pointed him in the direction of what was about to become the world's most prominent woolshed and wished him all the best.
"I didn't have a clue what was going on," he said. "There weren't a lot of shearing competitions around then. It was all something new."
Although he had already established himself as a shed shearer of immense promise, it was another five years before the Golden Shears was first to see the name R.L. Alabaster in lights, when he was second to Neil Churchhouse in the 1966 senior final.
He quickly made the step into the upper echelon of the open-class guns, making the top 12 for the semifinals and shearing in the first three open plates (for those who missed out on the final) in 1968-70 - "winning the thing" at the third attempt.
The next year, 2000-plus Saturday night fans saw his trademark early-60s slick-back in shearing's most famed half-hour for the first time. It was the first of his nine finals, which all ended with the prized purple winner's ribbon around someone else's neck.
He was runner-up twice, to Norm Blackwell in 1974 and Martin Ngataki in 1979, and third in one of the closest finishes in 1978, when it was won by inaugural world champion Roger Cox.
The last of Ray's Golden Shears Open finals was in 1981. He was uncharacteristically eliminated in the heats the following year, but bounced back for a popular win with Rotorua shearer Rei Rangiawha in the Maori-Pakeha teams event in 1983.
He continued shearing the open heats until 1992, and in recent years returned to the Masterton stage as a shearing judge in 2007-2009, as the competitions had again become very much a family event - wife Libby having also become a judge as they followed daughter Sheree's progress towards becoming world champion in Norway in 2008.
They were both in Wales last year to see Sheree finish second in her title defence, but also claim a second teams title.
Though some of Ray's own highlights were representing New Zealand in the home-and-away transtasman tests of 1979 and his numerous wins around the country, it was the 1983 Maori-Pakeha win which was singled out when Rei Rangiawha spoke at Monday's service.
Like fellow shearer Derek Gregory, he wasn't accustomed to public speaking, but the men of few words weren't going to let their mate down.
Rangiawha said he always knew he couldn't match Ray's shearing quality and had to think of other ways to beat him, usually without success.
"When he and I teamed up that year," he said, "I was so proud to shear with a true champion. I still hold that as probably the highlight of my career."
Gregory spoke of the contracting career which Ray started with brother Graeme in 1966, with a car and a truck to cart the gang around, and how it grew to provide work for hundreds of people over the years.
Ray also loved rugby, coaching Utiku Old Boys to the Wanganui title in 1988 and earning renown as someone who could bring the best out of anyone.
But shearing never gave him much time to play the game. "I'm sure if he hadn't been a shearer, he would have been a rugby player," one speaker said.