Southland's Leon Samuels awarded 'master shearer' status
Master Shearer status was first bestowed in 1975, to a group of 31 shearing notables from recent decades, and further names have been added occasionally over the ensuing years.
Southland shearer Leon Samuels has been acclaimed a ‘Master Shearer’ after a meteoric rise to the top in the last five years and an unprecedented string of major New Zealand Open title wins from March 2023 to March this year.
At least 80 per cent support from delegates to the Shearing Sports New Zealand national committee annual meeting was required for the nomination to succeed.
The 12-months sequence of major wins started with victory in the New Zealand Shears Open final in Te Kuiti and the New Zealand lambshearing championships at Fairlie at the end of the 2022-2023 season, followed by the New Zealand Merino Championships and New Zealand Spring Shears title in Alexandra and Waimate respectively at the start of the 2023-2034.
He then won at the Otago Shears near Balclutha and the Southern Shears at Gore in February and crown the triumphs with his first Golden Shears Open title in Masterton March.
He was the first person to win the Merino and Golden Shears titles in the same season since 1983, and his wins at the New Zealand Shears and the Golden Shears were the first by a South Island shearer in either event in more than 30 years.
Having shorn mainly in Australia for about a decade, Samuels had had just one win in the Open class in New Zealand until he won the first of three Otago Shears Open titles in 2020, and of his now 20 Open wins 16 have been in Shearing Sports New Zealand major-title events.
In 2021 he also won both of the major multi-wools crowns, the PGG Wrightson National Shearing Circuit and the New Zealand Shears Circuit, when both finals were held in Te Kuiti after the national circuit final was unable to be shorn in Masterton because of a Covid-era cancellation of the Golden Shears.
Samuels represented New Zealand at the 2023 World championships in Scotland, and has also represented New Zealand in two home-and-away transtasman series’, and he has shorn in two successful eight-hours shearing record attempts, with 648 lambs in a four-stand record in 2013, and 605 ewes in a solo record four years later.
Master Shearer status was first bestowed in 1975, to a group of 31 shearing notables from recent decades, and further names have been added occasionally over the ensuing years.
The first Master Blade Shearer status was accorded in 1979, and the first recognition of a Master Woolhandler was in 1992.
The last South Island shearers acclaimed Master Shearers were Canterbury gun Tony Coster and Southland legend Nathan Stratford, both in 2014, the last year in which anyone was made a Master Blade Shearer.
It’s now six years since the last acclamation of a Master Woolhandler, that of Central Otago competitor Pagan Rimene in 2018.