Deja vu as four finalists repeat their placings at CHB show

Dannevirke-based Catherine Mullooly scores her third win of the season with victory in the intermediate final. Photo / Doug Laing

Former world champion Cam Ferguson put in another classic shear to win a remarkable Central Hawke's Bay A&P Show Open shearing title in front of his home crowd in Waipukurau.

Emerging from a field of 17, the four in-form finalists yesterday finished in the same order, on the same shearing board, as they did in the CHB final 12 months earlier.

Ferguson, with wins in Waimate's Spring Shears and the Hawke's Bay Show's Great Raihania Shears behind him this season, shore his 15 sheep in 12min 44sec to be first to be first off the board by 24 seconds.

He also scored best in board and pen judging to take the win by more than 2.7 points from runner-up, 2012 World Championships teammate John Kirkpatrick, who also has two wins already this season.

Third was King Country legend David Fagan, who the previous night in Waipawa won his fourth speedshear in a row, while fourth was Pongaroa farmer David Buick, who a week earlier beat Ferguson in the Wairarapa Spring Shears final at Carterton.

There was also a touch of deja vu in the senior final which was won by Levin shearer Michael Rolston for the second year in a row.

Hawke's Bay shearers Hayzlee Gray and Jean-Pierre Bouyer were third and fourth.

Just a fortnight ago, Bouyer was runner-up in the Great Raihania Shears Intermediate final to Dannevirke-based Matawai shearer Catherine Mullooly.

She stretched her intermediate winning sequence to three on Saturday, her quality points wiping the time-points deficit between her and Waipukurau shearer Liam Quinlivan, who was first to finish, by about two minutes. Napier teenager Cayzer Wedd, son of open-class shearer Phil Wedd, who was 15th in this year's Golden Shears Open Top 30 shootout, had the first win of his career in the junior final.

The Open woolhandling provided a rare moment in shearing sports history with three men and just one woman reaching the final.

It was won by Golden Shears and world champion Joel Henare, of Gisborne, who claimed his third win of the season, comfortably clear of runner-up and five-times former event winner Ronnie Goss, the sole woman.

Dannevirke's Rocky Hape-Taite was fourth, still looking for victory after reaching the finals of all but one of six woolhandling competitions throughout the country this season.

Carmen Smith, of Pongaroa, won the senior woolhandling final, and Golden Shears International Shearing Championship Society secretary Angeline Colquhoun celebrated a day away from the office with victory in the junior final.

There are just two more shows before Christmas in the North Island, with shearing only at Stratford on November 24, and shearing and woolhandling at the Royal Manawatu Show at Feilding on December 8, the first December competition in New Zealand since the last Southland Shears in Invercargill in 2007.