NZ Shears Team For Six-Match UK Tour

New Zealand Shears Open champion Toa Henderson will be joined by Te Kuiti’s Jack Fagan for the Wools of New Zealand Shearing tour which will comprise at least six shearing test matches across four countries in the UK and France this year.

Earning his place with his win in Te Kuiti on March 29, it will be Henderson’s first time in the black singlet and silver fern, but the third test series in a row for Te Kuiti shearer Fagan, after a UK tour last year and a transtasman series in the summer.

Fagan makes the trip as third placegetter in the New Zealand Shears Circuit final, with winner and NewZealand-based Scots international Gavin Mutch ineligible for New Zealand team selection, and runner-up Mark Grainger, of Te Kuiti, who, with drought ravaging King Country, is unable to spare the six weeks away from his King Country farm.

With Grainger away shearing on Sunday, father Paul Grainger, who won the Golden Shears Open in 1985 and managed the team to the UK in 2015-2016, said: “It’s a shame. He was really torn about what to do. He’s taken on the farm, and the season – it’s the worst I’ve ever seen in King Country – has just made it too hard.”

The team this year will be managed by shearing judge Neil Fagan, who had several seasons shearing in the UK. including a Senior win at Corwen.

It will open the tour with tests against Scotland at the Lochearnhead Shears on June 28 and England at the Great Yorkshire Show at Harrogate on July 9.

They will then cross the English Channel to face France at the French Shears in Boussac on July 13, and return to the UK for a three-match series against Wales with tests at Cothi on July 19, the Royal Welsh Show on July 23 and the Corwen Shears on July 26.

New Zealand teams have shorn shearing tests in the UK almost annually for more than 30 years, with reciprocal series’ against Wales in New Zealand now held each year.

At Te Kuiti, Jack Fagan and Wairarapa shearer David Buick completed a 3-0 home-series win over Welsh shearers Llyr Jones and Gethin Lewis, avenging a 2-1 defeat in Wales last July.

Home sheep and conditions have been a significant factor, with Wales having had just one test match win in New Zealand, scored by Jones and Lewis at Te Kuiti in 2024, while New Zealand last won a series in Wales in 2019, the first such win since 2011.

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