Eketāhuna shearer Hemi Braddick moved a step closer to a potential World Championships spot after claiming his first national title during a big two days of shearing competition in Southland on Friday and Saturday.

Braddick was runner-up to veteran Southlander and former World teams champion Nathan Stratford in the New Zealand Long Wool Championships Open final in the Selbie family’s Lowther Downs woolshed near Lumsden on Friday and then won the New Zealand Crossbred lambs title at the Winton A and P Show’s Southland Shears on Saturday.

Both events carried points in the World Championships New Zealand team selection series, and, with 17 of the maximum possible 18 points from the southern legs, a week before the last points round, Braddick is guaranteed a place in a final next month, just four weeks before the World titles are decided at the Golden Shears in Masterton.

Northland shearer Toa Henderson, who included his first Golden Shears and New Zealand Shears wins among a haul of 44 points from the first five rounds of the year year-long series, has confirmed as one member as the top points-scorer in the series, and the next six face a February 7 final at the Rangitikei Shearing Sports in Marton to decide the second representative.

Wairoa Shears organiser Paul Swann indicates the level of the silt which had covered the Wairoa Showgrounds shearing board after Cyclone Gabrielle three years ago. Despite the devastation, the shearing board was used for the first time since on Saturday, for one final show before an expected change of venue. Photo / SSNZ. 

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It was a particularly close near all-North Island six-man, 20-lambs final contest at Winton, where there was less than 0.6 of a point between Braddick, runner-up David Gordon, of Masterton, Jack Fagan, of Te Kuiti, in third place, and fourth placegetter, Hawke’s Bay shearer and 2014 World champion Rowland Smith.

David Buick, of Pongaroa, was fifth, and lone South Island finalist Casey Bailey, of Riverton, was sixth, combating a major machinery breakdown after which the referee had to account for the time lost while repairs were effected.

There had been similar tightness in the Lumsden result 24 hours earlier, with less than a point separating Stratford, Braddick, and third placegetter Brett Roberts, of Mataura.

The big movers in the woolhandling selection series were Lumsden winner Pagan Rimene, of Alexandra and a teams title winner at the 2019 World championships in France, and Winton winner Tia Potae, of Milton, a former New Zealand transtasman series representative.

Two-times World individual champion Joel Henare, of Motueka, has a one-point lead at the top of the circuit, which has similar final stages, the tightness highlighted by the fact that each of the five rounds to date has had a different top points-scorer.

The two shows had what are thought to have been record entries, with 93 shearers and 51 woolhandlers at Lumsden and 89 shearers and 50 woolhandlers at Winton.

Hogan said when numbers were in decline at competitions in recent years he had suggested a “bounce-back” with growing numbers of younger people taking to the shearing industry and its sport, and the hopes materialised on Friday and Saturday. 

The southern events were part of the biggest weekend on the Shearing Sports New Zealand calendar of almost 60 shows nationwide.

Others were shearing-only events at Kaikohe, Wairoa, and Motueka on Saturday, and Levin on Sunday.

A feature of the other events was the fourth Wairoa win, and a third in the last four years at the championships, for 2012 World champion and southern Hawke’s Bay farmer Gavin Mutch, who will again be representing his native Scotland in the World Championships, being held on March 4-7.

Mutch has won the Wairoa title at three different venues amid the weather calamities that led to Saturday’s show being the last at the Wairoa Showgrounds, which will be used for a Wairoa River spillway in a new flood protection scheme. The southern events were part of the biggest weekend on the Shearing Sports New Zealand calendar of almost 60 shows nationwide.

His first win in 2010 was at Ohuia Station, after the A and P show was washed-out by torrential rain, and the second was at the showgrounds in 2023, four weeks before the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, leading to a two-year shift of the Shears to Kauhouroa Station, where Mutch won in 2024.

The show will be at a new venue in 2027.

The flooding from the river three years ago left silt up to 30cm deep on the shearing board, more than a metre above ground level, and demolished an implement shed alongside.

Mutch praised the volunteers who had worked so hard to get the facilities back into use, including the addition of a fifth shearing stand, and one show loyal, not involved with the shearing, said the organisers of the shearing had done an “exceptional” job inn running the event, including during another day of threatened rain.

“It just about didn’t happen,” he said. “But it did, and it made our show.”

Among the factors I bigger numbers this season is the influx of competitors from overseas for the World championships and the associated Golden Shears.

At Levin on Sunday, three of the four in the Horowhenua Open final were from overseas, but it was won by first-time Open-final winner Clay Harris, of Piopio.