Kiwi shears duo victorious

The Best of British simply wasn't good enough to get the measure of a Kiwi shearing duo when six gun shearers proudly representing the lands of their fathers threw down the gauntlet to one another at the Golden Shears on Friday night.
Kiwi duo David Fagan and Cam Ferguson combined to take on a Welsh team consisting of Gareth Daniel and Wyn Jones, and another drawn from the remaining countries of the British Isles, being Scotsman Gavin Mutch and Ian Montgomery.
Fagan and Ferguson - who have both worn the mantle of Golden Shears champion and World champion - slew the Welsh dragon and patted the British bulldog into submission with a display of classy, clean shearing.
Mutch and Montgomery finished runners-up with the Welsh pair third.
For Ferguson the team challenge came hard-on-the-heels of his shock omission from the semifinal Opens Shears line-up.
Many had been tipping Ferguson to feature prominently again this year, having snatched the supreme title at last year's 50th anniversary shears, but it was not to be.
Even though he had enjoyed a good run-up in shearing contests leading to the Golden Shears, and looked slick and fit in the heats, the young Waipawa shearer made the top 30 but crashed out in the play-off for the 12 semifinal slots.
Badly cutting a sheep didn't help his chances and when quality points had been assessed Ferguson had slipped back to 27th place - well off the money for a further attempt at the Golden Shears crown.
The tri-nations style shearing challenge was not the only contest of the night to pit the skills of intercountry rivalry.
Also taking to the boards were transtasman woolhandling opponents New Zealand and Australia, and again the Kiwis triumphed.
Joel Henare and the evergreen woolhandler Ronnie Goss took on the experienced Australian pair Racheal Hutchison and Joe Garvin.
Both teams had to cope with four merino fleeces and four longwool fleeces and Henare and Goss never looked like losing.
Their work was quick and clean and the two had time for a lengthy chat with the shearers before the Australians had completed their work. When the points were calculated the Kiwi duo scored 419.2 pts to the Australians 506.6.