Jamie Mackay: The Country host on New Zealand dominating at the 2026 Golden Shears

You're listening to The Weeknd's sport podcast with Jason Pine from News Talks at B.

New Zealand have won five of six titles at the Golden Shears world-sharing and wall-handling

championships in Masterson, Roland Smith and Joel Henare among the stars. Now speaking of stars,

what a delight to welcome into the studio on his way home after the psychonic event.

Host of the country, Jamie McCoy, I feel like I should have rolled the red carpet out, Jamie,

lovely to see you. Well, lovely to see you, Pony. You can't be at Wellington on a good day,

and this is not a good day. It was beautifully fine and sunny when I left the wire wrapper.

You know, maybe a good day will be along shortly. We can never count on it here in the capital.

Golden Shears 2026 is all done. Tell us about some of the highlights and the success for the Kiwi

Shears. Yeah, look, it was a great weekend for the Kiwi Shears and Wall Handlers. Of course,

this year come and sighted with the world-sharing and wall-handling championships as well,

and you honestly couldn't have scripted a better finish. Roland Smith's a bit of a friend of the

country, the radio show that I run, doesn't rate as well as yours, Pony. I think it does.

But a trimmer best, and it was so good. This is a guy who's effectively come out of retirement.

Look, he's won eight Golden Shears titles. He's won one previous world title. These days,

he likes diggers and tractors. He's got a big contracting business. He's running a farm.

He was running a sharing gang, and he barely gets any time to get on the handpiece himself.

He's just a magnificent athlete, and he was able to come back and win that world title last night.

And that's what he was after. He had to go at the double. Obviously, the Golden Shears open title

as well, but I think he just ran out of juice in the end, because he's not probably

fit for competitive sharing, but he's just so good. His quality is so good. He was able to

pick Toa Henderson, so it was fantastic. You know, those two guys won the world title on the Friday.

Toa retained the Golden Shears open, as we said, and Roland won the World Championships. Joel

NRA cleaning up in the wall-handling. Great weekend for the Kiwis. Absolutely, and it's still a massive

event, isn't it? Mastered and just comes alive. I remember, my very first radio job was at

Radio White at Upper in 1992 into 1993, and the Golden Shears was enormous then. Still the same now.

Did you have a, like, a hot, jock, music voice back in those days, Pony?

Well, I'm just in prime. I do remember that I had to MC the Golden Shears karaoke competition

that year. Was there a karaoke competition last night, or across the weekend? No, there wasn't

a karaoke competition, but interestingly, we could have done with one, because Rowena Duncan,

well, you know Rowena, my former off-site, it was one of the MCs. They've got very good MCs and

commentators there, but they had a bit of a balls up if I can use those words on your show Pony

with the sheep. Someone mixed them up, and we had, like, a 40-minute wait before we could

get on to the world machine-sharing title that Roland Smith eventually won.

So, poor old Rowena and the other MCs were padding for time. They were wandering around the audience

talking to all and Sundry Chippy was there with Kieran McAnulty Kieran. Obviously, he has a lot

of big connection with the Golden Shears, a former bookie, so he's right on the money there.

So we could have done with the karaoke competition to kill a bit of time. And of course,

on the good old days, they had Miss Golden Shears. That's no longer politically correct.

No, but I sort of feel as though if you're organising the Golden Shears, logistically, you make

sure the sheep are right. Was it just an unfortunate mix-up? Well, someone's here to roll eventually.

It was a bit of an unfortunate mix-up. They would call it a balls-up or a boxing-up the sheep

and to use farming terms. But see, for that world-sharing title, the one that Roland won,

they had three different types of sheep. So they had four pair-in-dales, six cross-bred long wall.

That's a full fleece and then ten second-shear. The big, big two-tooth-yung sheep that

are second-shear. So there's three different types of sheep and three different wall types.

So yeah, someone left the gate open somewhere and anyhow, we got there in the end. It was a bit

of a late finish, but it was a fairytale finish because Roland, this will be it for him. He was

out there to get that world title. He got it. Now, Joel Heneray now has, I think, 12 or 13

open titles in the wall handling at the Golden Shears. Rumor is that he's going to go hunting

Sir David Fagan's 16 open titles in the machine-sharing to maybe be the greatest competitor

at the Golden Shears. I don't think he will. We all do respect to Joel because David

Sir David Fagan is an absolute legend. But no, look, what wonderful occasion, the

warm memorial stadium, it's called the Heatswell and truly on, and it was on last night and

we count down now three years, I think, and the world champs are going to be in Australia.

The physical demands of sharing, Jamie, just give us an idea of just how tough it is on

bodies to do this. Well, I know a wee bit about it, Piny, because in a past life I was like a farmer

shareer. I did enough sharing to know, this is just too hard a job, you know? Like I could knock

out 200 a day, these guys will do 600 a day, or some of the world records are 800 a day, that puts

it sort of into perspective. But it is, they are super athletes, these guys, they not only share

all day, they tell a Henderson's and these guys are training in the German all the time, they're

super athletes, they say that a full day sharing, like a world record attempt is the equivalent of

running two Olympic class marathons end on end. So it involves amazing fitness and amazing

coordination. I mean, these guys, a lot of them would have been top sports people had they

chosen to go down another field, they're just genetically better than the rest of us.

Another great weekend, no doubt you'll cover it off on your supremely popular country show,

you talk about ratings, most of us can only dream of the ratings that you pull on Jamie. So,

look, I thank you very much for the boost. I haven't gone to studio with my face,

plastered over it like you asked, did you get sick of looking at yourself? I doubt I'd do it,

they need to change that screen, no, we've got a big tractor in our studio. I think I'd

prefer one of those, yeah, rather than a screen with my face on it, Jamie, great to see you,

mate, thanks for stopping in. Oh, thank you, Pony, great to be here. Jamie McIe,

hear him on the country across the ZB network.