Shearing sports across the country this weekend

Shearing sports across the country this weekend

Shearers and woolhandlers are about to embark on one of the busiest weekends of the shearing sports calendar with six competitions spread from the far north to the deep south over the next three days.

The competitions will be held at Lumsden on Friday, Kaikohe, Wairoa, Takaka and Winton on Saturday, and Levin on Sunday.

Machine shearing will be held at all six competitions, and woolhandling will also be contested at Lumsden’s Northern Southland Community Shears and the Southland Shears’ national crossbred lambshearing championships 52km away the next day at the Winton A and P Show.

All of the competitions are at A and P shows, except for the Lumsden events which will be held at two woolsheds in the area, the shearing starting at 8am tomorrow at the Selbies’ property at Five Rivers and the woolhandling starting at 9.30am at Long Range.

A range of Speedshear competitions are also being held, one at the Wairoa show on Friday night, and three in Southland, starting tonight(Thursday) at the Railway Hotel in Otautau, followed by the Middle Pub Speedshear in Winton tomorrow night(Friday) and the Colac Bay Tavern Speedshear on Saturday night.

More than 200 shearers and woolhandlers are expected to compete throughout the country over the weekend, most of those in the longwool championships at Lumsden also expected to be at Winton the following day, and some of those competing at the Wairoa show on Saturday likely to also compete at Levin 340km away the next day.

But a word of warning of the possible demise of some competitions came today from long-time Lumsden competition secretary and Patsy Shirley who had by mid-morning Thursday received just 32 advance entries, for competition which in their heyday had well over 100 competitors.

On-the-day entries are expected to at least double the number, and organisers have about the same number of sheep available as last year, when World champions Nathan Stratford, of Invercargill, and John Kirkpatrick, of Napier, were first and second respectively in the Open shearing final, and World woolhandling champion Joel Henare, from Gisborne but based in the South Island, won the Open woolhandling title.

Kirkpatrick, who went on to beat Stratford at Winton 24 hours later, was not among the early entries for this weekend’s shows, but Shirley said the 13 Open shearing entries include Stratford’s 2018 UK tour New Zealand teammate, reigning national lambshearing champion David Buick, of Pongaroa, and Te Kuiti shearer Jack Fagan.

But no entries had been received for the Junior shearing and just one in the Intermediate grade, while just two entries had been received for the Junior woolhandling.

Mrs Shirley said a lot of hard work was put into organising the competitions and raising sponsorship, but they need the support of the competitors and all of the industry to survive.

“It’s a shame they don’t turn up,” she said. “It doesn’t take much, they’ve all got cellphones, and it would help if they entered early.”

ENDS

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