Services to shearing honoured | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

Golden Shears founding legend Laurie Keats says he felt uncomfortable ticking "yes" to accept the honour of being made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit knowing how many helpers are behind the event's success.

"It's pretty easy to look like you're important in the Golden Shears when you've got 200 volunteers working for you," he said.

Mr Keats, 75, had a handpiece in his hand crutching lambs on Friday when tracked down by the Wairarapa Times-Age to talk about his involvement with shearing and shearing competition for more than 60 years.

He won his first Young Farmers shearing competition in 1948 at just14 years of age.

Ten years later as chairman of Wairarapa District Young Farmer's Club, he was the driving force "as one of many" behind setting up a nationwide competition at the Masterton A and P show.

At that time, areas around New Zealand had their own regional competitions, but Mr Keats reckons that first 1958 competition was five times the size of anything that had gone before.

"Shearers never went out of their regions; a few of them chased the competitions. There were one or two going around calling themselves national champions & but the ultimate became the Golden Shears."

The competition was drawn together with some help from Federated Farmers, which Mr Keats said had "more political clout" than the keen young visionaries.

"We'd been trying to tell them we'd get competitors from all over New Zealand; nobody believed us," he said.

The first Golden Shears was held in 1961, as the popularity of the Masterton show had been proven among competitors and spectators alike.

One competition was held in an old garage building in Perry Street and "the public just lapped it up".

"Those two things clinched it; there was a need for it, and it was going to be supported."

Mr Keats said though many thought the shears was "a flash in the pan", the committee that formed had high hopes.

"But I don't think if anyone said at that first meeting: 'You'll be touring the world as chairman of the Golden Shears World Council' I would have believed them. We just envisaged a damn good competition."

With strong national competitors as well as locals like the Morrises "Maori boys from Te Ore Ore they were pretty strong" winning at the open competition was a tough prospect, and for Mr Keats serious competition took a back seat to administration.

"If I'd have wanted to win at the Golden Shears I'd have had to go away like the outsiders did and come in with nothing else to think about but shearing. It wasn't until I was shearing in the UK that I got into an open final."

Mr Keats said shearing has been good to him, having taken him three times around the world, including a demonstration in Yugoslavia to people who had never seen machine shearing in action, but unfortunately lacked the means to buy the machines.

His award citation recognises Mr Keats as a foundation member of both the National Committee of Shearing in New Zealand now Shear Sports New Zealand and the Golden Shears World Shearing Championship.

Mr Keats established the Shear History Trust which runs the Shear Museum in Masterton and has an oral shearing history archive, and he is recognised as having trained young shearers and encouraged many into the sport.