Rare Aussie Win In NZ Merino Champs

Rare Aussie Win In NZ Merino Champs

An Australian shearer has upset the Kiwi guns to win the first title of the New Zealand shearing season.

Damien Boyle, from Broomehill in West Australia, won the New Zealand Merino Open Championship in Alexandra last night, winning a six-man final in which the runner-up was veteran Kiwi finewool shearing exponent, Rakaia shearer and 2000 and 2004 winner Grant Smith, who was recently accorded Master Shearer status by Shearing Sports New Zealand.

But there was still some Kiwi success, with hometown girl Tawhai Nelson scoring the biggest triumph of her career by winning the Open woolhandling title.

Hometown favourite Charlie O'Neill was third in the shearing final and defending champion Nathan Stratford, of Invercargill, was fourth.

Boyle, who was top-qualifier for the semi-finals but last-man-in to the final, had spent years trying to pick-off New Zealand's top finewool shearing prize, first reaching the final at Alexandra in 1998 and being runner-up at least twice, including last year. Just a fortnight ago, he won the latest of a string of titles at the Royal Perth Show. The last Australian to win the title at Alexandra is thought to have been Ian Wratten, in 1991.

The championships are the only merino event on this season's Shearing Sports New Zealand calendar of 60 shows, ending in late April, the Open shearing heats being a compulsory first round in the PGG Wrightson National, win which competitors accrue points at shows on five different wool-types, aiming to make the semi--finals and final to be shorn at the Golden Shears in Masterton in March.

O'Neill's brother, Colin, headed the qualifiers, and second-to-top was veteran Mossburn contractor Mana Te Whata, a 1981 Golden shears junior champion who won six Alexandra titles from 1987 to 1995.

The leading North Islander was Te Kuiti shearing icon and eight-times series winner David Fagan, who turns 49 later this month. New World champion and Hawke's Bay shearer Cam Ferguson, who had been shearing merinos in Central Otago for over a month since returning from his triumph in Wales, failed to qualify for the weekend's quarterfinals of 24 shearers, but still secured the vital one series point for taking part.

Nelson had to overcome a couple of the World's best in her final, going one-better than last year when she was runner-up. Gisborne teenager Joel Henare, the No 1 ranked woolhandler in New Zealand last summer and reigning New Zealand Open champion, was second, and former World champion and third was reigning Golden Shears champion Joanne Kumeroa, of Wanganui.

ENDS

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