Wairoa couple one and two at shearing champs

HAPPY COUPLE: Wairoa teenager Ariana Hadfield (right) and boyfriend and Angelo Manttan after they were first and second in the New Zealand novice shearing championship final in Te Kuiti yesterday.

There was more than just a bit of shearing in the air as Wairoa teenager and Massey University student Ariana Hadfield, 19, won the Novice shearing title in a Hawke's Bay domination of the New Zealand Shearing Championships in Te Kuiti.

The runner-up in yesterday's final was boyfriend Angelo Manttan, 18, and just to add to the general family-friendly nature of the second day of the three-day championships Ariana's cousin, Levi King, was fifth in the six-shearer final over two sheep each.

The final was one of three won by Hawke's Bay competitors in the first four finals of the championships which end today.

Kahuranaki farmer Mark Ferguson, 43, yesterday completed a double of Golden Shears and New Zealand championships Junior shearing wins, and Ricci Stevens, of Napier, on Thursday completed a similar double in Junior woolhandling with a New Zealand Junior title 12 months after it was won by then wife-to-be Angela.

Ricci Stevens was also confirmed last night as the national No 1 ranked Junior woolhandler for the season, but hopes for even more as he competes in the Senior shearing sem-finals, and possibly the final, today.

There was promise of more Hawke's Bay triumph with Hastings shearer Rowland Smith the favourite to score a rare treble in three Open-class events at the championships, starting with the North Island Shearer of the Year final late last night.

Angela Stevens' father, new World champion John Kirkpatrick was the second favourite, having been runner-up nine times in Smith's lead-in sequence of 14 finals wins in the last eight weeks.

New Novice champion Hadfield, a former pupil of St Joseph's Maori Girls College in Napier and in her second of three years studying a B.Ag.Com, was almost born with a handpiece in her hand, as daughter of Open-class shearer and former World three-stand record holder Bart Hadfield, who with wife Nuku won the 2015 Ahuwhenua Trophy for Maori Excellence in sheep and beef farming on the family property at Mangaroa, near Tiniroto, north of Wairoa.

Thus the spirit of competition she and the beau had its limits. She had had wins in Novice finals at the Manawatu Show in Feilding and the home show in Wairoa, but she said: "He only learnt to shear last winter - but his mum was a shearer."

For the pair it started when she was "rousieing" and he was pressing in "the local shearing gang" about 14 months ago.

On the day, the two concentrated on quality with Hadfield last to finish, in 8min 11.91sec, beaten off the board by Manttan by just 5 seconds. First to finish was Te Kuiti hope Pounamu Joseph who shore the two sheep in 6min 43.81sec.

Ferguson, whose shearing in recent years had been confined mainly to his own sheep, hadn't shorn a competition two months ago, but now has four titles to his name and a growing band of supporters, on-hand yesterday as mother and father mum Penny and Ian, wife Annie, and children Ellie and Clara watched from the auditorium, albeit Clara with her eyes closed and snug in her mum's lap.

After a heady few weeks, life will return to normal for Ferguson, who said: I'll be back on the tractor tomorrow."