Alan Barker, shearing legend and tough old prop

Sports columnist and former sports editor based in Manawatū

For those still waiting to buy the book, here goes an updated version.

Soon after our conversation, in March 2019 at the age of 92 and as the club’s oldest 18-hole member, he got his long-awaited hole-in-one on the 16th hole atManawatū, as a 35-handicapper.

Years before that he had offered his services as a de facto course marshal and on his golf cart he would hunt down freeloaders and bail them up and extract green fees. One or two tried standing up to him but soon stood down. One non-payer, on spotting the advancing vigilante, took to his scrapers, abandoning his bag of clubs, which Barker duly confiscated.

A paid-up Manawatū member got so exasperated at being accosted by Barker that he put a sign on his golf bag reading: ‘‘I am a member’’.

Barker, though, was known best for his work in the shearing industry. He had been working as a farmhand when, after a match against Oroua at Kimbolton, he was convinced by fellow Manawatū prop Kevin Nesdale that he would earn morewielding a handpiece.

Barker went on to be a shearing contractor employing up to 45 staff in 10 gangs shearing 1.5 million sheep each year before Christmas. From there he became a New Zealand Wool Board shearing instructor for 15 years, worked at Massey University and did shearing instructing in the United States and Britain.

He had so many shearing gangs on the go at once, around the big sheep stations back of Hunterville and in

Wairarapa, that he often got little sleep.

When he coached the

Massey University rugby team, he sometimes hauled his untried scarfie players along to Manawatū woolsheds, figuring shearing was away to get them fit.

Barker was a tough old propwho played 33 games for Manawatū (1958 to 1960) out of the High School Old Boys club. He took part in Manawatū’s 12-6 win over the Wallabies in 1958, was in the unbeaten 1959 Manawatū team and propped for Manawatū-Horowhenua against the British Lions. The attendance of 24,996 that day remains the record for Palmerston North’s Oval.

Barker also represented the NZ Navy and when playing for Hunterville, Wanganui snapped him up.

He had left the land for eight years at sea in the navy from 1944 late in World War II and stayed on during the Korean War in the 1950s. He served on board the frigates HMNZS Hawea and Taupo before he was transferred to the Royal Navy cruiser, HMS Belfast, the ship still permanently berthed in the River Thames.

While Barker lived into his tenth decade, in England six decades earlier in the early 1960s he had amild heart attack, which he put down to too much shearing. It forced him to slow down.

Later in life a car accident forced him into playing his rounds of golf in a golf cart.

Golf first came hisway when he was playing rugby for Manawatū in Whangarei and the players sidled off to a golf course. Eventually he hooked up with the Rangitikei Golf Club near Bulls for eight years, where there was no need for a collar and tie, before he was convinced the Manawatū club was closer to where he lived in Palmerston North. He even went on to serve on the committee.

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Crossing bordersmooted

After a Te Kawau rugby player recently upped sticks and returned to play in Whanganui, it generated discussion on whether, one day, the top clubs from the two unions might merge.

The player concerned has gone to play for Ngamatapouriway up in the sticks at the top of the Waitotara Valley and to get there Manawatū clubs would face a trip of 154km. But as they say, their bus trip to Kimbolton has gone with the demise of the Feilding Old Boys-Oroua senior side.

It’s not clear whether the various clubs would match up in strength. If they did there would be other bus trips to Taihape and Waverley (Border).

While Manawatū is down to seven senior teams, Wanganui has just five since Ruapehu (Ohakune) pulled out. And already the colts and women play in joint competitions. Just food for thought.