Contest Sought A Long Time

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 34

Contest Sought A Long Time

New Zealand ploughmen had only just started to take part in world .ploughing contests when New Zealand ploughing officials began to think about the possibility of a world ploughing contest being held in this country.

A glance back over the files of “The Press” shows that this was being done in July, 1957, when the Second New Zealand ploughing championships were held near the site of this week’s world contest. At a special function after that contest the then president of the New Zealand Ploughing Association, Mr A. G. Dawson, said that the holding of the world championships in New Zealand in 1961 was a "distinct possibility,” Questioned earlier in the day Mr Dawson had said that New Zealand had been tentatively set down as the venue of the world contest in 1961. Then on November 20, 1957, “The Press” recorded that Canterbury was likely to be the venue of the world match in 1964. It was said that the World Ploughing Organisation had advised the New Zealand Ploughing Association that New Zealand had been tentatively allocated the world contest for 1964 and the council of the association had unanimously decided that if New Zealand

was confirmed as the venue for this match it should be held in Canterbury. At meetings of the governing board of the World Ploughing Organisation, New Zealand representatives were soon urging that a world contest should be held in New Zealand.

According to extracts from a meeting of the governing board of the World Ploughing Organisation held at Portstewart in Northern Ireland on October 7, 1959, Mr W. G. (Bill) Miller, of Gore, spoke for the New Zealand Ploughing Association in extending an invitation to the World Ploughing Organisation to hold the world contest in New Zealand—“a very plough-minded” country where 20,000 spectators attend the country’s National ploughing match. Mr Miller, on that occasion, asked the board to consider New Zealand as the country for the world ploughing contest in 1967 in preference to any other 1 application for that year. On the occasion of the New Zealand championships at Outram in July, 1961, Mr G. M. Scott, then the secretary of the New Zealand Ploughing Association, said that New Zealand had had

an application in for the world contest since 1956, and when he had attended a meeting of the governing board in Italy the previous year he had renewed the application. He said he felt that the board viewed with favour the New Zealand application “but some ends have yet to be tied up.” Subsequent New Zealand representatives at meetings of the board continued to urge that a world match be held in New Zealand until continuation of the allocation of this year’s contest to New Zealand was given in Austria in 1964, when the New Zealand representative was the present president of the New Zealand Ploughing Association and chairman of the organising committee for the 14th World Ploughing Contest, Mr E. A. E. Fairhall. The decision to hold the match in Canterbury was taken by the executive of the New Zealand Ploughing Association early in 1965.

And so at last the match has come to New Zealand. The sincere hope of all New Zealanders will be that officials of the governing board of the World Ploughing Organisation and the ploughmen themselves and their team managers will feel that the long trip to this far corner of the world has been worthwhile.