Northern giant wins national Shears title

MEDIA RELEASE

On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand April 3, 2011. 2pm
Back injury a thing of the past as northern giant wins national Shears title

A young Far North shearer who a year ago was considering giving-up his passion because of a back injury has broken through for one of the sport’s most significant successes by winning the New Zealand Open Championship.

Rowland Smith’s win in Te Kuiti on Saturday night was most significant for his emergence as another young champion, with no home-town faces in the big final since it was first held in 1985.

It came just 24 hours after an ominous Te Kuiti breakthrough victory in the North Island Shearer of the Year final, in which he beat favourite John Kirkpatrick, of Napier, and Te Kuiti icon David Fagan.

In the Open showdown even Fagan was missing, his semi-finals elimination earlier in the day ending his defence of the title he won for a 17th time last year.

Despite the dent in local claims to being the Shearing Capital of the World, the crowd was, however, no less enthusiastic as it honoured the emergence of a new star, and re-emergence of Northland as an unlikely stronghold of shearing power despite a chronic sheep-number decline over recent years.

Aged 24, and not 25 as previously widely reported, Smith was not born until almost seven months after Fagan first won the title in 1986, and his win followed an unprecedented family treble in which teenaged Kaeo farmers sons Bevan, Bryce and Marshall Guy won the Senior, Junior and Novice titles, the only non-Northland name to go on the championships shearing honours board being that of lone South Island winner and Intermediate winner Brett Roberts, of Mataura.

But, based in Hawke’s Bay, where he was born, Smith also helped keep the Bay counter-claims to the fore, along with World champion Cam Ferguson, of Waipawa, who was runner-up, and favourite, Golden Shears winner and Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick, who was fifth.

Former Golden Shears champion Dion King, also from the Hawke’s Bay, bounced back to winning form by claiming the remaining honours in an Open-class triple-header, the New Zealand Shears Circuit final.

There was no time to stop for six-months-pregnant international woolhandling star and Taihape schoolteacher Sheree Alabaster after she won her fifth New Zealand Open title in Te Kuiti last night, and at 9.30am today she headed-off on a week-long camp with the eight pupils from her tiny Taoroa School. The Senior woolhandling title was won by Emma Bolton, of Taihape, and the Junior title by Flaxmere woolhandler Rahna Watson-Paul, a workmate of Smith who then cleared the boards for him in the big shearing final. In the other major event, Fagan and Ferguson completed a 3-0 test series win over Welshmen Gareth Daniel and Wyn Jones in the Kiwis’ last appearance together as the 2010 World Championships team. But Fagan’s not about to retire, and confirmed that at the age of 50 he’ll be trying to get back into the team next year.

The two-metres tall Smith was highly-focused as he hit Te Kuiti for the three-day championships, in which he reckoned his biggest previous claim to fame was being “probably” the only shearer to finish second in all four major competition grades.

He was runner-up to Fagan last year, just weeks after returning to competition as he recovered from his back injury, and was also runner-up to Kirkpatrick a month ago at the Golden Shears in Masterton, a more successful stomping-ground with a Junior title in 2004 and Senior title in 2006.

He had sounded a big warning with two big wins over the prolific veterans before the Golden Shears, and with two more between the big events was by the weekend the second favourite with the TAB, headed only by the 40-year-old Kirkpatrick who had won 15 finals during the season.

The 20-sheep final became a match-race between the favourites with Smith’s intentions clear from the start, as he banged-out the first five in just 3 minutes 28 seconds, an average of under 42 seconds a sheep.

Kirkpatrick nudged ahead on the 10th.

It was a see-sawing frenzy, with Ferguson also challenging for the pace, before Kirkpatrick beat Smith to the end by just nine seconds, shearing his 20 sheep in 14min 26secs, but aware the time advantage wouldn’t make up for some rare blemishes in the quality of the job.

Ultimately the second money going to Ferguson, with Jerome McCrea, taking a day off from rugby refereeing in the Whanganui area, to finish third. West Coast shearer Jason Win was fourth, Kirkpatrick fifth and Nathan Stratford, Invercargill, sixth.

It completed a remarkable season for Smith, who never let-up after he and brother Doug broke a World shearing endurance tally record in January.

He would have tackled the record with third brother Matthew a year earlier, but was forced out by the unexplained back injury, which ruled him out of the complete 2009-2010 summer mainshear.

“Shearing rams one day,” he said. “Just woke-up the next day, sore, could hardly walk, and it just didn’t go away.”

At one stage surgery was in the offing, but Smith overcame the injury with the help of a sports’medic, and later a triathlon trainer as he prepared for January’s record, in which he contributed 562 in eight hours to a two-stand record of 1066.

When others would have settled back for the first beer in months, Smith stuck to the training of cycling, running and swimming in addition to the daily hot-summer grind in the woolshed.

Finishing second in Masterton just provided greater motivation to triumph in Te Kuiti, where his goal was not only the title, but also it’s big prize of a quad-bike and selection in a New Zealand to compete in the UK over the next few months.

Woolhandling champion Alabaster, 36, is also not giving-up, despite expecting her first child in late June. She’s sticking with the pupils through the camp, including a Sunday-night sleepover with the monkeys at Wellington Zoo and another two months before starting a year’s maternity leave.

While a couple of kuia have suggested she start to take it easy, she said life on the farm watching lambing, and a trip through Africa, showed her what other mothers go through, so she wasn't about to put the feet up early.

After an early elimination at the Golden Shears in Masterton last month, she was determined to make amends last night, and dedicated the win to father Ray, a former top shearer who died in February. She was first to finish and won by more than three points-from back-to-back Golden Shears champion and six-times New Zealand champion Joanne Kumeroa, of Whanganui, while two-times winner, former Golden Shears champion and Manawatu shearing family mum Ronnie Goss, was third.

Alabaster also plans being back on the competition scene in October, also chasing a place in the New Zealand team for the World Championships in Masterton next March and the chance to regain the World title she won in Norway in 2008.

ENDS

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