NZ Shearers Chase Rare Scotland Test Match Win

The Wools of New Zealand New Zealand shearing team takes the first step in trying to restore the country’s reputation as the top competition shearing nation in the World when a six-match UK and France tour starts in Scotland this weekend.

The Kiwi team of New Zealand Shears Open champion and Pongaroa farmer David Buick and New Zealand Shears Circuit winner Jack Fagan opens the tour against Scotland at the Lochearnhead Shears on Saturday.

Single tests will follow against England at the Great Yorkshire Show on July 10 and France on July 12, followed by a three-test series against World champions Wales, with matches at the Cothi Shears on July 20, the Royal Welsh Show on July 24 and the Corwen Shears on July 27.

It will be a tough start, up against experienced Scottish internationals Calum Shaw and Hamish Mitchell, who were third in last year’s World Championships teams final, in which Kiwi shearers Rowland Smith and Leon Samuels were sixth, New Zealand’s worst-ever placing.

Shaw claimed his place in the team for Saturday’s test by winning the Royal Highland Show Open final last weekend, and Mitchell won his place as runner-up to Shaw in the Scottish National final.

In annual visits to Scotland, New Zealand has not won at the Lochearnhead Shears since multiple Golden Shears champions John Kirkpatrick and Rowland Smith beat Shaw and New Zealand-based Scotsman Gavin Mutch in 2016, which was the first for New Zealand since 2003.

On the less-familiar Scottish blackface sheep (blackies), Buick and Fagan will, thus, be after just the second win for New Zealand in matches for the Joe Te Kapa Memorial Trophy, first presented in 2012 in memory of a New Zealand shearing legend who shore many seasons in Scotland.

The pair have just finished shearing at Auch Estate, in the southern highlands, and Fagan said. “It was great practice on the blackies”.

In the UK with team manager and Piopio shearing contractor Mark Barrowcliffe, they say: “It’s always an honour to represent your country and we are looking forward to the challenge against the Scottish.”

Barrowcliffe said: “Both boys have been hitting a few Blackies before my arrival but today was gear test-out day, judge a few and work some angles out to enhance the body finish we can achieve.”

“Both David and Jack are shearing very well so we are really keen to pull off an upset on Saturday and knock this Scottish team over,” he said.

Buick, who first represented New Zealand in a transtasman test in Australia in 2014 and is on his third national team tour in the UK, stunned the shearing World when he won the New Zealand Shears title in April, less than two-and-a-half years after being buried up to his neck in an accident on his farm southeast of Dannevirke.

Flown to hospital by rescue helicopter, it left him fighting for his life, and amid the possibility he might not shear or walk again.

Fagan has won selection in the national team for the first time, although he has been an injury replacement in the UK in the past, and follows a family tradition in the black singlet, in the footsteps of past New Zealand representatives in father Sir David Fagan, uncle John Fagan and cousin James Fagan. He will also shear a transtasman test for the first time in October, in Australia.

The big target is the series against Wales, which has won the last two World individual machine shearing championships finals.

At the championships in Scotland last year, Wales also won the teams final, in which New Zealand was sixth, along with there being, for the first time, no New Zealander in the individual final, the events having been dominated over the years by New Zealand which in Masterton in 2026 will be trying to reclaim titles it last won in Invercargill in 2017.

Wales also won a series 3-0 against New Zealand in Wales soon after last year’s championships, and in April won a test match in New Zealand for the first time.

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