Shears Test Matches On The Agenda

Shearing Sports New Zealand is hopeful it will be able to resume the annual home-and-away transtasman test matches this year.

Chairman Sir David Fagan said that with borders open again after the two years of the Covid-19 disruption New Zealand has been invited to send a team to Bendigo, Vic, in October, during the Australian National Shearing and Woolhandling Championships.

It is hoped the Australian team will then reciprocate for return matches at the Golden Shears in Masterton in March.

The last matches between New Zealand and Australia were held at the Golden Shears in 2020, a fortnight before the first pandemic lockdown, when New Zealand won both the shearing and woolhandling tests and completed a 2019-2020 season cleansweep after a bladeshearing win in Waimate in October 2019 – the first cleansweep by either side since 2014.

Sir David described the prospect of the series being revived in Bendigo as “looking quite likely” but decisions will be made at the SSNZ national committee meeting in Christchurch on August 15-16, when the committee will also decide the processes for selecting the New Zealand team for the 2023 World championships at the Royal Highland Show in Scotland next June.

If the decision is to go to Bendigo, the meeting will have to decide the team composition, with the usual selection process having been also disrupted by the pandemic, which resulted in dozens of competition cancellations, including the 2021 New Zealand Merino championships in Alexandra and the Golden Shears in 2021 and 2022.

The machine shearing team has traditionally comprised the winners of the Golden Shears Open, the national shearing circuit and the New Zealand Merino Championship, the woolhandlers being the winners of the North Island circuit and the New Zealand Merino Championship, and the bladershearing winners at the Waimate Spring Shears and the Canterbury show’s Golden Blades.

The annual transtasman series began in the 1974-1975 season, alternating between a new Golden Shears of Australia at Euroa, Vic, and the Golden Shears in Masterton, with two tests each season until 1984, when the competition was suspended because of a boycott by the Australian Workers Union.

It was revived at Perth in 1997, since when the Australian legs have been held mainly in conjunction with the Australian championships and hosted in rotation by the states of Australia.

Woolhandling tests were added in 1998 and bladeshearing tests, with New Zealand-leg matches in Christchurch or Waimate, were added in 2010.

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