Hawke's Bay shearer Rowland Smith extends a winning sequence this season to 15 wins by reclaiming the North Island Shearers of the Year title in Te Kuiti on March 31, 2017. Photo/Supplied
Hawke's Bay shearer Rowland Smith extends a winning sequence this season to 15 wins by reclaiming the North Island Shearers of the Year title in Te Kuiti on March 31, 2017. Photo/Supplied
Hawke's Bay shearer Rowland Smith is on the way to a rare treble at the New Zealand Championships in Te Kuiti where he last night regained the title of North Island Shearer of the Year.
He's a warm TAB favourite to win the New Zealand Shears Circuit for the first time and successfully defend the New Zealand Open title on the last day of the three-day championships today.
No one has won all three titles in one season since legendary Te Kuiti shearer and now Sir David Fagan did so in 2002, bouncing back from his first defeat in Masterton's Golden Shears Open final in 13 years.
The inter-island shearing and woolhandling match, won by North Island shearers Rowland Smith, John Kirkpatrick and Mark Grainger, and woolhandlers Sheree Alabaster, Keryn Herbert and Sue Turner.
New World Champion and Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick, who won that 2002 Golden Shears title and who has won all three Te Kuiti titles over the years, is the biggest threat, although his secong placing in last night's North Island final was the 10th time he'd been runner-up in Smith's sequence of now 15 consecutive wins since the start of February.
Kirkpatrick won the six-man race over 10 second-shear ewes and 10 lambs which he shore in 15min 42.3sec, but Smith was otherwise always in charge with the best quality points both on the board and in the pens, and added the title to his South Island Shearer of the Year series win in Gore in February.
Third was the 2012 winner, former Hawke's Bay shearer Dion King, who now lives at Alfredton, in Wairarapa.
Smith, the 2014 World champion, made a particular point of thanking those involved in running competitiions throughout the country - "including all the workers out back" - with a plea to younger people to step-up to help keep the competitions alive.
He also featured in a Northern win in an inter-island teams match, joined by Kirkpatrick and third shearer Mark Grainger, of Te Kuiti, and woolhandlers Sheree Alabaster, of Taihape, Keryn Herbert, of Te Kuiti, and Sue Turner, of Taumarunui.
Wairoa teenagers Ariana Hadfield and boyfriend Angelo Manttan (far right) seem to have other things on their mind after the Novice shearing final. They were first and second respectively.
The 2012 World champion, Whangamomona farmer and Scotland international Gavin Mutch, dominated a transtasman challenge in which his Te Kuiti NZ Shears team, also including David Buick and Taumarunui Senior shearer Conan Te Kene beat the team from the Warrnambool Show in Victoria, comprising Te Kuiti regular Roger Mifsud, Sam Mackrill and Senior shearer Lee Harris, who has shorn most of the last two summers in New Zealand.
Earlier yesterday, there was more than shearing in the air as Wairoa teenagers Ariana Hadfield, 19, and boyfriend Angelo Manttan, 18, were first and second in the Novice shearing final.
Hawke's Bay farmer and 43-year-old rookie competitor Mark Ferguson added the Junior title to that he won in the Golden Shears Junior final four weeks ago, and last night Masterton-based Sean Gouk won the Intermediate final, his first win since his only previous victories in two Junior finals on successive days two years ago.
