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Hawke’s Bay competitors have won three of the major Golden Shears titles despite its absence from the glamour event, the Open Shearing Championships.
Open-class shearer and woolhandler Ricci Stevens, of Napier, wins the Golden Shears men's woolpressing title in Masterton on Friday, breaking a Masterton family's stranglehold on the title dating back over two decades. Photo / Pete Nikolaison
The major successes were wins by Wairoa shearers Bruce Grace, 21, and Ryka Swann, 19, in winning the Senior and Intermediate finals respectively, and by Ricci Stevens, 33, of Napier, winning the men’s woolpressing final, ending the two-decades-long stranglehold on the title by two Masterton brothers, in particular near-perennial champion Jeremy Goodger.
Stevens, Grace and Intermediate runner-up Kaivah Cooper, all work for Hawke’s Bay contractors Kirkpatrick Shearing.
Wairoa shearer Bruce Grace, based in Napier and working for Hawke's Bay contractor Kirkpatrick Shearing, wins the Golden Shears Senior final in Masterton on Saturday. Photo / Pete Nikolaison.
It was a different story in the Open championship, which started with 91 shearers and saw the pre-final elimination of Hawke’s Bay shearers Rowland Smith, John Kirkpatrick, Cam Ferguson, Dion King and Tararua-based Scots national Gavin Mutch, who had collectively won 15 of its 22 finals since Kirkpatrick’s first Hawke’s Bay win in 2002.
Also eliminated along the way was defending champion Leon Samuels, of Southland, meaning a rare Golden Shears Open final without any former title winners, and with just two of the six from the North Island.
But it was still an in-form shearer winning the title for 2025 in Northland gun Toa Henderson, his 37th win around the country since re-emerging in 2018-19 after several years’ shearing in Australia. His recent wins include the Otago and Southern Shears titles in the South Island.
Joel Henare, from Gisborne, won the Open woolhandling title for an 11th consecutive time. New Zealand won a transtasman woolhandling test on Friday but the shearing test honours went with Australia 24 hours later.
Among other Golden Shears title events, Kaivah Cooper, of Napier, and with Raupunga origins, was second in Swann’s Intermediate triumph, and Lucy Elers and Tatijana Keefe were first and second in the Senior woolhandling final, both with strong Raupunga connections, although Elers is from Mataura.
Former Dannevirke shearer Paerata Abraham, now based in Masterton for more than a decade, won the PGG Wrightson Vetmed National Shearing Circuit title for a second time, with Mutch third and Waipawa shearer Axle Reid, originally from Taihape, fourth.
Grace’s Senior win, his sixth of the season, was a continuation of a rivalry with runner-up and Oamaru shearer John Cherrington (6 wins), and Laura Bradley (10 wins), from Papatawa, between Dannevirke and Woodville. Bradley had to settle for fourth, but had on Friday won the invitation Women’s event for a second time.
On Thursday Central Hawke’s Bay Smedley farm cadets Bradley Anderson and Jordan Miles won the Student Shearing Challenge.
Fulltime building apprentice, part-time shearer, but good enough to win the Golden Shears Intermediate title - Ryka Swann, of Wairoa. Photo / Pete Nikolaison
Grace has followed the competitions north and south, learning from Kirkpatrick the shearing and competition ethic needed to get to the top. Swann, who won the Novice title in 2020, is now a building apprentice who travels to competitions with his family, including sister Ashlin, who won the Novice title last year.
Stevens, who is also an Open-class shearer and woolhandler and son-in-law of John Kirkpatrick, said until the Golden Shears he hadn’t crank-pressed a bale all season.
But competing against the Goodgers over the years in the only woolpressing competitions on the calendar, he knew what he had to do if he was to claim the title.
The big break in the head-to-head final was when Jeremy Goodger amassed the bigger penalties by pressing well short of the target weight.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, personalities, and shearing.
