Hundreds to join battle at Golden Shears

SON OF A GUNS: David Fagan (pictured) and David Buick . . . the stadium roof will be in danger if they are going blow for blow. PHOTOS/FILE

Hundreds of competitors have descended on Masterton for the 55th Golden Shears international shearing and woolhandling championships, which start at the War Memorial Stadium in Masterton today and end on Saturday.

More than 320 entries from as far afield as Scotland and Chile have been received for the 22 events with most attention being on legendary Te Kuiti shearer David Fagan, who is retiring at the end of the season after 37 years of competitive shearing in which he has won 640 open finals worldwide.

Fagan, 53, is one of more than 70 competitors in the glamour event, the Golden Shears Open, in which he has reached the final 26 times and posted 16 wins. His first final was in 1984 when runner-up to brother John, and he won the event for the first time in 1986. He last won in 2009.

And if that's not remarkable enough Fagan has won at least 25 other events at the Golden Shears as well, including nine wins in the National Circuit final, for which he is also the favourite this time round.

It would be wrong, however, to suggest the 2015 open final will be one-way traffic.

For starters, anybody who has been a regular follower of shearing sports will know that nothing is certain in a sport which relies not only on the form of the competitor but also the willingness of the sheep to play ball. Strike a difficult customer and no matter how talented the shearer his - or her - points are sure to suffer.

Nobody would understand that better than Fagan and, while the TAB has him as a firm favourite, the one sure bet is that he will be taking nothing for granted against opposition which will include another couple of former Golden Shears open winners, Dion King and Cam Ferguson, and there's Pongaroa's David Buick, who has the form background to suggest a Wairarapa victory is certainly not out of the question.

In fact, you'd have to hope the roof of the stadium is well nailed down if Fagan and Buick are going blow for blow in the open final on Saturday night, such will be the level of vocal support these two will engender.

The 2015 championships start today with lower grade shearing and woolhandling heats plus the preliminary stages in three woolpressing competitions and the pace will be stepped up with the open shearing and woolhandling heats tomorrow.

A transtasman woolhandling test will be held tomorrow night, and the big finals will be staged, along with a shearing test between New Zealand and Australia, on Saturday evening.

A special feature this year will be a reunion of about 16 of the open shearing championship finalists from the first two decades of the Golden Shears, among them 81-year-old Southlander Ian "Snow" Harrison, the lone survivor of the first open final in 1961. Another highlight will be a wool-sculpting competition in conjunction with a Speedshear tonight.