Blades Guns Start Campaign For World Shears Gold

New Zealand’s most recent World shearing champions have affirmed their hopes of helping restore black-singlet supremacy in shearing sports by entering the national team selection series’ that will take place over the next 12 months.

The near year-long series’ will decide two machine shearers, two blades shearers and two woolhandlers for the Golden Shears World Championships in Masterton on March 4-7 next year.

Kicking off the series’ is the blade shearing for which the first round is at the Inangahua A and P Show’s Reefton Shears on Saturday.

Entries include Hutt Valley-based Allan Oldfield, from Geraldine, and Tony Dobbs, of Fairlie, almost six years after the double of Oldfield’s individual win and the pair’s teams win in France in 2019.

Hawke’s Bay shearer John Kirkpatrick, the individual machines champion in Invercargill in 2017, and teams championship teammate Nathan Stratford, have both entered the machine shearing selection series starting at the Southern Shears being held in Gore on February 14-15, as has Rowland Smith, also of Hawke’s Bay and who won the individual title in Ireland in 2014.

The woolhandling series also starts in Gore and includes South Island-based Joel Henare, from Gisborne, who won the World individual woolhandling titles in Invercargill in 2017 and Masterton in 2012, and Pagan Rimene, of Alexandra, who won a teams title in France.

New Zealand did not win any of the titles at the 2023 championships in Scotland, the first time the silver fern had not been atop the podium in a championships in the history of the event that was first held in 1977, in England.

Oldfield, whose opposition includes father and former New Zealand representative Phil Oldfield, faces a particular challenge to regain selection, living in the North Island while all eight events in the blades shearing series are in the South Island, ending at the Golden Blades New Zealand Corriedale Championships in Christchurch in November.

While he has not done much blade shearing recently, he says: “I’m definitely going to try my best at making the team, but it’s going to be expensive flying down every couple of weeks.”

The Reefton Shears will be one of four events on the Shearing Sports calendar this week, starting with the Dannevike A and P Shearing and Woolhandling Championships on Friday.

On Saturday there will also be the North Kaipara A and P Show shearing at Paparoa in Northland, and the Rangitikei Shearing Sports shearing and woolhandling championships in the Marton Memorial Hall, where most of New Zealand’s top Open-class shearers will gather for the fourth of five qualifying rounds in the PGG Wrightson Vetmed National Shearing Circuit.

The Dannevirke and Marton events include two rounds of the North Island woolhandling circuits. 

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