Miri Haig (right) after her Aria Waitangi Day Sports open woolhandling win, in her first final in 26 years. Chelsea Collier (left) came third and Hanatia Tipene was runner-up.
Miri Haig (right) after her Aria Waitangi Day Sports open woolhandling win, in her first final in 26 years. Chelsea Collier (left) came third and Hanatia Tipene was runner-up.
Taumarunui farm stock manager Miri Haig went 26 years almost completely out of the woolhandling scene but showed she hadn’t lost the touch when she won the Waitangi Day Sports open final near Aria on Tuesday.
Haig’s win came on a day when about 110 shearers and woolhandlers – including finalists from the UK, Northern Ireland, and Australia - came to the isolated King Country township with a population of barely 130.
She was up against a field of 11 woolhandlers - six with open final wins behind them.
They included former World Teams champion Keryn Herbert, of Te Kuiti - whose 2020, 2021 and 2022 wins at Aria and three wins this season are among a career total of 55 wins - however, she missed out on a place in Tuesday’s final.
Former New Zealand Shears open champion Hanatia Tipene, also of Te Kuiti, was the runner-up, and Chelsea Collier, of Hamilton, came third.
She said she just wanted to have fun, whilst saying “the bug that never leaves you”.
Miri Haig’s competitive woolhandling career
It had been a brief competitive career, in which Haig’s biggest success was winning the 1996 senior final at the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti, where she was runner-up in the open final in 1997 and 1998.
Following the teenage and early 20s dabble, she moved on to a farm.
Here she said “life got in the way” and she had “lots of babies”.
She also became a stock manager overseeing three farm blocks in the Taumarunui area.
Haig has a 13-year-old daughter who is learning to shear and looking to compete possibly, and two others who do some woolhandling.
Still, it was her own concerted decision to get back amongst it at Aria, although she was surprised by the result.
Haig said it was a “pleasant surprise” to just make it out of the heats to the semifinals, and the same to also make it to the finals - against competitors who were mainly barely out of school when she last won anything.
She said even with “the bug” stirring again, she was keeping it in context.
Haig said she’d compete at a new woolhandling competition on February 17 at Ohura, a township between Taumarunui and Stratford, also with a population of about 130.
Then she “might head down to the Goldies” in Masterton on February 29-March 2, and “probably” return to the Te Kuiti board in April.
Aria Waitangi Day Sports Shears
Northland shearer Toa Henderson, seen here winning at Marton, won the open shearing final at the Aria Waitangi Sports Day. Photo / SSNZ
Meanwhile, Northland shearer Toa Henderson’s dad reckoned “The boy’s on fire.”
Others might think it’s time they should call the fire brigade after Henderson won the Aria open shearing final – the fourth time in 10 days in the Central North Island he’s shorn a 20-sheep final in under 16 minutes.
But this time it was even quicker, finishing in 14min 56sec, two seconds quicker than when he won the event last year.
Henderson again beat each finalist by at least a whole sheep, averaging 44.8 seconds a sheep caught, shorn and dispatched.
This time he also beat world nine-hour lamb shearing record-holder and Hawke’s Bay-based England shearer Stuart Connor by 48 seconds, and eight-hour record-holder Jack Fagan, of Te Kuiti, by 1min 22sec.
Following a win at Taihape on January 27, second-place behind Golden Shears champion Rowland Smith at Dannevirke on Friday and another win at Marton on Saturday, Henderson again held the quality together enough to claim the victory by a comfortable 2.4 points from Connor, runner-up for a second time since arriving in New Zealand in November.
Aria senior shearing final winner Bruce Grace, from Wairoa, pictured three days earlier in a final at Marton. Photo / SSNZ
With final points in order of how the four came off the board, Fagan was third and fellow Te Kuiti shearer Mark Grainger fourth, finishing in 17min 59sec and unable to make a significant dent despite having the best quality points in both board and pen judging.
Last season there were 27 20-sheep finals (four on lambs) in New Zealand, with only two, at Aria and Apiti, both on adult sheep, being shorn in under 15 minutes.
In other shearing events at Aria, 2022-2023 No 1 ranked intermediate shearer, Bruce Grace, from Wairoa, had his first senior win, after three second-placings and four third placings in nine other senior finals during the season.
West Australian shearer Danielle Mauger followed a win at Dannevirke on Friday, and a second placing at Marton on Saturday, with victory in the intermediate final.
Irish shearer Paddy Dunne continued a run of winning and high-placed form to win the junior final.
Northern Hawke’s Bay twins Ashlin and Shawna Swann were first and second in the novice event.
In other woolhandling events, the senior final was won by Lee George, of Te Kuiti, and the junior final by Capree Wallace, of Taihape.
