Mutch edges it in historic victory

UP WITH THE GREAT: Golden Shears open shearing final winner, Gavin Mutch (right) is in esteemed company as he holds the trophy aloft, with 16-time victor David Fagan.

Emotions invariably run high at the Golden Shears.

Success at what is the world's most iconic shearing and woolhandling championships is always something special, and it is nothing unusual for the tears to flow. Tears of joy and tears of relief after a job well done.

The 2015 edition which drew to a close at Masterton's War Memorial Stadium before a packed house on Saturday night might well, however, have been the most emotional in the 54-year history of the event.

And that's despite the fact the script which had 16 times open title shearing winner David Fagan crowned again as the premier champion at what was his last competitive appearance at Golden Shears before his retirement next month was tossed aside when he was eliminated in the semifinals.

Appropriately, however, Fagan was still very much part of the action during the prize- giving ceremony which followed the open final. Golden Shears life member and present World Shearing Council chairman Greg Herrick paid a tribute to the 53-year-old who has been a dominant force on both the New Zealand and international scene for some three-and-a-half decades. Five times, in fact, he has been crowned world champion.

"David Fagan would have to be one of the greatest champions our industry has ever seen ... his very first Golden Shears open win in 1986 was the start of the David Fagan phenomenon," Herrick said.

Fagan was then invited to the stage to receive a special presentation and the big crowd stood and applauded loudly before the man himself thanked those who had supported him.

Remarkably three of those involved in the end stages of the premier event were first time finalists ... Feilding duo Aaron Haynes and Murray Henderson and Troy Pyper from Winton in Southland. Dion King, of Hastings, was a past open champion while Scotsman Gavin Mutch and Nathan Stratford had made finals before but never tasted success there. It was Pyper and King who set a cracking pace in the final. Right from the outset they went at it hammer and tongs, with Pyper holding a slight advantage until the latter stages when King lifted his workrate a notch and was the first to finish his 20 sheep in a slick 17mins 36.835secs. Pyper was a close second, with the other four not far behind ... certainly close enough to suggest that basically any of the six could be a winner once the quality points were tallied up.

That being the case you could feel the tension emanating through the stadium as a crowd, now hushed, waited for the big announcement It was the now-kilted Mutch who scored a narrow but thoroughly popular victory, thereby becoming the first ever international winner of the Golden Shears open title.

By his own admission the Scot, who now lives with wife Pip and family in Taranaki, was virtually rendered speechless by his success. "This is the one everybody dreams about winning," he said, adding that Fagan's dominance had stopped a lot of others from realising that dream. "I"m just glad I managed to win it before he retired."

It was a tearful Mutch who stood alone as Scotland's national anthem was played.

The closeness of the open final was typified by the points scoring, with Mutch edging out Haynes by just 0.569pts.

Stratford was third and he earned the special award for best quality points.

There was plenty of other exciting action on Saturday's programme too. Rakaia's Troy Coster won the PGG Wrightson Circuit final, repeating what he had done from 2009 to 2011, 23-year-old Joel Henare of Gisborne blitzed his opposition to win his third consecutive Golden Shears woolhandling title and the Australians scored a fourth consecutive win over the Kiwis in their transtasman series.

It was a notable victory too as it means the Aussies have now won 29 to New Zealand's 28 in a competition which first started in 1974.

The Aussies had earlier also won the woolhandling test against New Zealand, a dual victory which moved their shearing manager John Murray to say "who cares about cricket anyway".

-More on Golden Shears, pages 21 and 22.