The victorious New Zealand team of Jack Fagan (from left), David Buick and manager Mark Barrowcliffe, after beating Wales in the shearing test at Raetihi on Saturday. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
The victorious New Zealand team of Jack Fagan (from left), David Buick and manager Mark Barrowcliffe, after beating Wales in the shearing test at Raetihi on Saturday. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
A small central North Island town with a population of barely 1000 and a grandstand holding 200 to 300 people has been the scene of another Welsh test-match sporting demise.
Just 12 hours before their rugby team suffered their most humiliating defeat in 17 consecutive test-match losses, in front of a home crowd in Cardiff, shearers Gethin Lewis and Llyr Jones were beaten by New Zealand guns David Buick and Jack Fagan in a shearing test at the Waimarino Shears in Raetihi, just an hour or so from Mt Ruapehu.
In the first match of a three-test series, the black-singleted pair won by a comfortable 6.388 points, and the Kiwis are now favourites to win the remaining tests at the Waitomo Caves Sports next Saturday and on the second day of the March 27-29 New Zealand Shears in Te Kūiti.
This was three months after the Welsh pair scored Wales’ first win in a shearing test in New Zealand, against Masterton shearers David Gordon and Paerata Abraham.
But Lewis, who has shorn in Hawke’s Bay each summer Downunder for more than a decade, showed the new series is not a forlorn hope for the reds, making all the pace in shearing the 20 sheep in 18m 8.3s to beat a gaining Buick by just over 14 seconds.
Buick’s better quality gave him the individual honours by just 0.291 points.
Fagan and Jones were each well over a sheep behind but Fagan maintained enough control on the quality to beat Jones by more than 6.097 points, which was most of the team’s eventual winning margin.
It wasn’t the first New Zealand-Wales test in Raetihi, with Gordon and Abraham having beaten Lewis and Jones by 6.248 points in the first match of last year’s New Zealand series, and Rowland Smith and Leon Samuels beating a Welsh development team of Lewis and Dylan Jones in 2023.
It was a big day for the town with 99 shearers competing across the five grades, including 34 in the glamour open grade, while 97 volunteers helped run the competition, which was held alongside the town’s annual rodeo.
Eketāhuna shearer Hemi Braddick had the biggest of his five open shearing wins when he won the four-man Waimarino final over 20 sheep each, coming out on top in a frenetic finish to pip Mark Grainger by 0.02s and having the better quality to win by 2.401 points.
Third place went to Dannevirke-based Scotsman and former world and Golden Shears champion, Gavin Mutch, while Hastings shearer Brook Hamerton, a nephew of Rowland Smith who’s still chasing his first open win, came fourth.
Eketāhuna shearer Hemi Braddick won the Waimarino Shears open final. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
Braddick knew a “few” names had missed qualifying for the final – including all four who were in the test – but it was a big boost to get an A-grade title ahead of the New Zealand Shears, he said.
It was also a big day for Laura Bradley, also from the Tararua District, who won both the Waimarino Shears senior final and the final of the first Te Whiringa Senior Circuit, which carried prizes including a six-week contract working in West Australia.
She has now won 11 senior finals in 2024-2025, easily a record for a female shearer.
Wairoa shearer Bruce Grace, who won the Golden Shears senior final two weeks ago, was second in both events on Saturday, despite breaking a tooth off a comb just after a standard change to his second handpiece in the circuit final.
Laura Bradley won two senior finals at the Waimarino Shears and has now won 11 finals this season. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
Both finals were shorn over 12 sheep each in a new challenge for senior shearers, the circuit of 10 qualifying rounds and a final designed to better prepare them for the challenges of open-class shearing.
There was a significant surprise in the intermediate final, won by Luke Marsden – who’d never shorn a final – in about a dozen attempts and who had failed to go past the heats at the Golden Shears.
But the 19-year-old beat both the winner and runner-up from the big Masterton event, both on time and overall points.
Marsden, who grew up in Middlemarch in Central Otago and now lives in Taumarunui, is currently shearing for Jack Pue in Raetihi.
Teenage shearer Luke Marsden won the intermediate final at the Waimarino Shears in Raetihi. Photo / SSNZ
He had responded well to the mentoring from his boss and others around him and it showed in what was a confident performance and not an unlikely result by the end of the four-man final of six sheep each.
The junior final provided a 10th win in the grade this season for Jodiesha Kirkpatrick, of Gisborne, and the novice final was won by Cody Hall, of Taumarunui.
On Saturday night, local shearer Chris Dickson won the Waimarino Open Speed Shear, having also beaten the top guns in the speed shear at the Golden Shears.
The Waimarino Shears was one of three shearing sports competitions on Saturday, with another 52 shearers competing across four grades at the Methven Lambshears at the Methven A&P Show in Mid-Canterbury and about 20 shearing at the Warkworth A&P Show, the last of the six competitions north of Auckland this season.
Waimarino Shears results
Raetihi, Saturday, March 15, 2025
International (20 sheep): New Zealand (David Buick 18m 22.47s, 64.324 points; Jack Fagan 19m 44.56s, 68.628pts) 132.952pts beat Wales (Gethin Lewis 8m 8.3s, 64.615pts; Llyr Jones 19m 52.5s, 74.725pts) 139.34pts. New Zealand lead the series 1-0. The second test is at Waitomo on March 22 and the third test is at Te Kūiti on March 28.
