Shearing Test Match To He Be Shorn In Hawke's Bay

A New Zealand and Wales shearing test match cancelled last weekend with the raining-out of the Waitoma Caves Sports will now be shorn in Hawke’s Bay.

The match, the second of three in the 2024 Wools of New Zealand Shearing Series, will be shorn at the new Hawke’s Bay Autumn Shears in Waipukurau on Wednesday.

Masterton shearers and brothers-in-law Paerata Abraham and David Gordon won the first test in Raetihi on March 16 and are out to avenge last July’s 3-0 loss to Wales in the UK, where New Zealand’s last series win over Wales in Wales was posted in 2019.

But visiting guns Gethin Lewis and Llyr Jones are out to score Wales’ first win in a test match in New Zealand, where both have extensive careers working summers downunder, and if unable to break the duck in Waipukurau will get another chance in the third test in Te Kuiti on April 6.

Shearing Sports New Zealand North Island committee chairman Warren Parker, of Raglan, confirmed the rescheduling of the test and commended the Hawke’s Bay Autumn Shears committee for working to accommodate the match, which needed to have 80 more sheep available and other logistics in addition to those set-aside for the five grades of shearing and three of woolhandling already programmed for the day.

Shearers shear 20 sheep each in each of the matches, which are the latest in about 30 years of tests shorn by New Zealand against UK opposition in New Zealand and the UK almost every year for three decades.

Wednesday’s championships, the second-to-last of 59 shows that had been on the SSNZ calendar for the season, will start at 7.30am, with the Junior, Senior and Open woolhandling all completed during the morning, and shearing events from Novice to Open starting late-morning and completed in the afternoon.

They will take place in the Central Hawke’s Bay A and P Show shearing pavilion, where the show’s own annual shearing and woolhandling championships are held in November each year.

Entries closed last night (March 27) and well over 100 competitors are expected from both the North and South islands, including the Welsh team members and others from overseas coming to the end of their summers working in New Zealand.

It’s a busy week to end of the season, with the Oxford A and P Show Shears on Saturday and the Mackenzie A and P Show’s national lamb shearing championships on Monday, the Autumn Shears on Wednesday and the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti over the following three days.

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