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Black-singlet swansong for shearing great David Fagan?
Black-singlet swansong for shearing great David Fagan?
Shearing great David Fagan is likely to end one of the longest New Zealand representative sports careers when he dons the black singlet for two test matches against Wales this summer.
The Te Kuiti gun and Rakaia shearer Tony Coster will shear tests against Welsh visitors Gwion Evans and Rhys Jones at the 50th anniversary Southern Shears in Gore on February 21 and the Pahiatua Shears on March 1.
Fagan, 53, first represented New Zealand 30 years ago, in a match against a World Selection which included older brother John at the Golden Shears in Masterton in 1985.
He has since shorn 19 transtasman matches in New Zealand and over 100 matches against teams from the UK, in New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Fagan has also represented New Zealand at nine World championships, winning at least one title at all but one - Toowoomba, Queensland, in 2005.
He won five individual and seven teams titles, which are among an Open-class career record of 630 wins around the World – about three times as many as the World’s next-most successful shearers.
He won eight finals in 2014, including the Royal Welsh Show Open during a New Zealand team tour for which he was selected after finishing fourth in last year’s New Zealand Open championships final.
While Fagan says last year’s tour in the UK was his last in a New Zealand team and he no longer shears full-time and hasn’t shorn a full day in over a year, he isn’t ready to hang-up the handpiece altogether.
He says he will continue while he’s still competitive, and plans to shear shows throughout New Zealand at least through the rest of the season.
Having last contested an open competition when he won at the Stratford show in November, Fagan is heading south with son and fellow Open-class shearer Jack for the Northern Southland Community Shears tomorrow(Friday) at Long Range, Lumsden, and to Winton on Saturday for the Southland Shears’ national crossbred lambshearing championships, which he won 14 times from 1984 to 2005.
Meanwhile, the Welsh team opens a six-match tour against a regional development selection at the Tauranga A and P Show this Saturday.
ENDS
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