Samuels quells NI hopes
Southland shearer Leon Samuels became the first South Islander to win the Golden Shears open shearing title in 35 years in a dramatic six-man final of 20 sheep each in Masterton on Saturday night.
Samuels was second in the race — the only shearer to get within a sheep of miracle-man, Wairarapa’s David Buick, who shore the final in 16m 16.064s, one of the quicker times in the 62 years of the event.
It was just 21⁄2 years after Buick was so badly injured in an accident on his Pongaroa farm the prognosis was that he might not walk again.
Ultimately it was a Southland onetwo, with 40-year-old Samuels winning by 1.258pts from runner-up and Riverton shearer Casey Bailey, in the final for the first time.
Losing some points in judging of the sheep in the pens, Buick was a further 1.26pts back in third place, followed in order by Southland veteran Nathan Stratford, in his 12th Golden Shears open final, first-time championship finalist James Ruki, of Te Kuiti, and 2015 winner and Hawke’s Bay-based Scotland international Gavin Mutch.
Samuels, originally from Mangakino in the central North Island but based in Southland or Australia for many years, had only one previous Golden Shears open final placing when he came third in 2020.
However, he was the winner of the NZ Shears open final in Te Ku¯ iti last April and thus a member of the NZ team at the World Championships in Scotland two months later.
The last South Island shearer to win the open was Edsel Forde in 1989.
Among those in the crowd of about 1000 was Alexandra great Brian “Snow” Quinn, who won the Golden Shears open title six times between 1965 and 1972.
The drama started before the shears started, with eight-time winner Rowland Smith out with injury, and Northland gun and prolific winner Toa Henderson then eliminated in the quarter-finals.
The pair and Samuels were quoted from the outset by the TAB as the most likely to win, Samuels making it a fifth win for the season.
Circuit final
Nathan Stratford won a third PGG Wrightson National Shearing Circuit final, with just a 0.355pts margin to Samuels in second place, in another Southland quinella. It was Stratford’s 20th National Circuit final.
On the night, he also shore his 18th transtasman test — a NZ team record — celebrated by joining with Samuels and Marlborough shearer Angus Moore in an all-south Island win over Australians Daniel Mcintyre, Nathan Meaney and Josh Bone.
But there were just 2.51pts in the test-match result, the closest margin since an Australian victory in Warrnambool, Victoria, in 2013, and NZ’S narrowest win since 2009.
In the annual home-and-away series, Australia have now won 38 tests and New Zealand 33.
Woolhandling
It also gave New Zealand a 2-0 weekend, after woolhandlers Tia Potae and Cushla Abraham won their match against the Australian woolhandling team of Marlene Whittle and Alexander Scholl on Friday night.
Joel Henare, 32, from Gisborne, won the Golden Shears open woolhandling title for a 10th time in a row, but with a narrow margin of just six points from Alexandra’s Pagan Rimene. ■