PRESIDENT A CHAMPION

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30803, 15 July 1965, Page 20

PRESIDENT A CHAMPION

The Rakaia Ploughing Match Association, the host association for this week’s national championship match, has as its president one of the country’s most distinguished ploughmen, Mr H. A. (Alan) Magson who was runner-up at the world ploughing ehampionships at Grignon in France in 1961 being less than four points behind W. Dixon of Canada.

Mr Magson is now in his third year as president of the Rakaia association and a year ago was appointed to the executive of the New Zealand Ploughing Association. A true son of the district where this week’s match will be held, Mr Magson was born a few miles away from Rakaia at Rokeby where he went to school—he is now incidentally chairman of the Rokeby School Committee. He also attended Timaru Boys’ High School. Mr Magson began ploughing with a six-horse team about 1940 on the home farm which he now farms in partnership with his brothers, Jack and Ivan. He gives credit to his elder brother, Jack, for having taught him to plough. His first match ploughing was done in a Rakaia match about 1953. Three years later when New Zealand championship matches were introduced Mr Magson tried his hand and in the first contest at Papakaio he was well placed being third. Until 1961 when he won the coveted Atlantic Silver Plough at Outram near Dunedin and then went on to represent New Zealand

at the world final in France, he missed only one New Zealand final—that was at Hastings in 1959. He won another third placing at Invercargill in 1958 when R. M. Kingsbury, of Wakanui, ploughed to victory, and at Timaru in 1960 he was runner-up to B. J. McPhedran, of Taiko, South Canterbury. His win at Out-

ram in the following year was therefore not unexpected. When he returned in December, 1961, from his triumph at Grignon, Magson was modest about his success. “I suppose it was the luck of the draw," he said. For both the stubble and grassland ploughing, he said later, he had been fortunate in getting good plots of ground to plough. But it seems that more than luck was involved in the Rokeby ploughman’s achievement. In the early years of the New Zealand ploughing championships he was notable for his consistently good performances and in France although at a disadvantage as a New Zealander who had not done any competitive stubble ploughing, he was third among all competitors in the stubble ploughing section and sixth equal for grassland ploughing. With his brothers he farms 840 acres at Rokeby. It is a mixed farm carrying 1800 halfbred ewes and altogether about 2000 sheep, and they crop about 250 to 300 acres a year taking crops of peas, wheat lupins, grass seed and clover.