Southland shearer and 2023 New Zealand World Championships representative Leon Samuels, pictured last year at the New Zealand Shears, in Te Kuiti, where he won the open final. He's a past winner of the national shearing circuit and a leading contender as it ends in qualifying rounds at the Pahīatua Shears.
Southland shearer and 2023 New Zealand World Championships representative Leon Samuels, pictured last year at the New Zealand Shears, in Te Kuiti, where he won the open final. He's a past winner of the national shearing circuit and a leading contender as it ends in qualifying rounds at the Pahīatua Shears.
Possibly the biggest annual sports event in the Tararua district is expected to attract more than 150 competitors to a farm west of Pahīatua on Sunday, February 25.
The Pahīatua Shears, a shearing-only championship of five grades, is one of about 60 shearing sports shows throughout New Zealand each summer, about 25 of which include woolhandling competitions.
As it has been for more than 50 years, it is a significant event on the shearing sports calendar worldwide, being the last shakedown before the glamour event, the three-day Golden Shears in Masterton.
It’s the final qualifying round of the PGG Wrightson Vetmed National Shearing Circuit, from which the top 12 go on to contest the circuit finals in Masterton, thus bringing together the cream of multi-wools shearing specialists.
And the strength of the competition last year was shown that the six-man open final featured four world champions, three of them the individual champion and one a winner of a world teams title.
Most of the shearers who go to Masterton will be at the Pahīatua Shears, in the Fouhy family woolshed at 2120 Mangaone Valley Rd, and over the previous two days will have been at the Taumarunui Shears on the Friday and the Apiti Sports Shears on the Saturday.
As well as from throughout New Zealand, from Northland to Southland, and across Australia, it is expected competitors from Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland will compete.
Competitors from such countries have been working in New Zealand recently and competing with success, in the lower grades, as happened at the Dannevirke A&P shearing and woolhandling championships on February 2, when Danielle Mauger, from West Australia, won the Intermediate final and Kevin Noone, from Donegal, Ireland, won the Novice event.
Invariably, at least one Pahīatua Shears winner will go on to win at the Golden Shears in the following days, as was the case when Will Sinclair, of Balclutha, in South Otago, won the Intermediate title at each competition.
Neither event was held in 2021 and 2022, because of the Covid crisis, and in 2020 multiple Golden Shears champion and former world champion Rowland Smith, of Maraekakaho, won both the Pahīatua and Golden Shears Open finals, the fourth time he had claimed the double.
The line-up in last year's open final was world class. From left, winner Toa Henderson. 2014 world champion Rowland Smith, 2012 world champion Gavin Mutch, 2017 world champion John Kirkpatrick, his teams champion partner Nathan Stratford, and Manawatū shearer Aaron Haynes.
In the past, shearing legend David Fagan, of Te Kuiti, won both events in the same season at least nine times, and Hawke’s Bay gun and 2017 world champion John Kirkpatrick did it twice.
The open final is the glamour event at any shearing competition, and 2024 will be no exception, with defending champion Toa Henderson, of Kaiwaka, in Northland, expected back to defend the title in a season in which he has regularly finished a sheep or more ahead of fellow competitors in the 20-sheep finals in the weeks building up to the Golden Shears.
In a sport where outcomes are based on penalty points – the faster the time, the cleaner the shear and the lower the combined score – Henderson recently shore four consecutive 20-sheep finals in under 16 minutes, still holding the quality together enough to win at Taihape, finish second to Smith at Dannevirke, and then win at Marton and then the Aria Waitangi Day Sports in southern King Country, all in the space of 11 days.
Among the vanquished in three of those finals was former world and Golden Shears Open winner Gavin Mutch, a Scotland international living in New Zealand for more than 30 years and now farming near Dannevirke.
Laura Bradley's recent wins make her one of the most successful females ever in senior shearing competition. Photo / SSNZ
The Tararua District’s brightest other prospect is Laura Bradley, of Papatawa, whose senior grade wins at the Wairarapa and Horowhenua shows and in the Rangitīkei Shearing Sports’ North Island championships, and a string of second and third placings this season, make her one of the most successful females ever in senior shearing competition.
While women have won the Golden Shears novice, junior and intermediate finals, none has won the Golden Shears senior title.
Bradley is also on a path that could make her the first woman to reach open-class based on the number of wins – the small number of others who have reached the top class having done so on the basis of tallies in the woolshed.
Bruce Grace, from Wairoa, young Napier shearer Kaivah Cooper has had multiple junior wins this season, and Swann wins Ashlin and Shawna, of Wairoa, have dominated recent novice competitions.
Woolhandling competition is not held at the Pahīatua Shears, but the Tararua District does have woolhandling hopes at the Wairarapa Pre-Shears Woolhandling Championships on February 28 and the Golden Shears over the following three days.
Among them are Eketāhuna sisters Ana Braddick and Ngaio Hanson in the open woolhandling, and Bradley’s sister, Eleri, in the junior woolhandling.
Braddick had her first open win recently at Marton, Hanson represented New Zealand at the 2023 World Championships in Scotland, and Eleri Bradley, a nurse in Palmerston North, won last year’s Golden Shears Novice woolhandling final.
The Pahīatua Shears have been held at Mangaone Valley since 2015, having been held each year for about the previous decade in the Pahīatua sports stadium.
It operates with a small and committed committee, and widespread community support, with often 80 or more mainly local sponsors recognised on a display in the woolshed each year.
Convenor Flash Duxfield, who also judges at other competitions, says the Shears would never happen without that support, but like most competitions, and sports organisations throughout the country, needs more people at committee level to ensure event survival and ongoing success.
Perhaps the biggest of supporters is the farmer, who is providing 1400, an increase of 200 from last year because of the expected increase in the number of competitors.
“The numbers competing show exactly why,” he said.
“This is a sport that both supports and is supported by an industry that has been a major part of the New Zealand economy for 150 years or more. Pahīatua, and the whole of Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay and the East Coast is a major part of that.”
The large team of committee, officials and helpers at last year's Pahīatua Shears.
Shearing starts at 8am and a hectic pace is likely throughout the day to keep the programme on time.
Much of that will fall on commentator Tuma Mullins, of Dannevirke, who says all the competitors know they should be ready in plenty of time, or get the “hurry-up” on the loudspeaker.
