Shearing: Kiwis clean-up in Warrnambool

Te Kuiti shearer Mark Grainger has won the open final at the Warrnambool show in Australia.

K3 scored a near clean sweep at Australia's top crossbred shearing competition on at the weekend.

They won the open, senior and intermediate finals, and the open and senior woolhandling finals at southwest Victoria coast city Warrnambool, balanced by home show representatives Glen Stephens, Tyson Scholz and Lee Harris beating the NZ Shears Te Kuiti team of Mark Grainger, David Buick and Dion King in a transtasman challenge which included merinos.

The six-stand open shearing final over 15 sheep each was a near all-Kiwi showdown won by Te Kuiti gun Grainger, son of 1985 Golden Shears Open champion, winner of five show finals in New Zealand over the past three years, and winning his place in the NZ Shears Te Kuiti team by finishing fifth in last season's New Zealand Championships open final.

He beat runner-up and 2014 and 2015 Warrnambool winner Buick, of Pongaroa, by 1.37pts. King, first off in just over 12 minutes was a further eight-tenths of a point back third.

Fourth was Queensland-based Jovan Taiki, from Porangahau and the only finalist not based in New Zealand, fifth was Hayden Tapp, from Taihape, and sixth was South Otago shearer Jordan Boyes.

The senior final was won by Victoria-based Karipa Tumohe, from Balclutha, and the intermediate title was won by NZ Shears representative and 2017 New Zealand Intermediate champion Sean Gouk, of Hamilton.

Gisborne woolhandler Keri Henare, a cousin of world champion Joel Henare, had a surprise win in the open woollhandling final, beating Alexandra sisters Pagan Karauria and Larnie Morrell, and the senior woolhandling title was won by Wilz Marshall, from Port Waikato.

There was further New Zealand success at the Katanning show in West Australia where the Open woolhandling title was won by Phoebe Nikora, from Dannevirke, and the Open Speedshear was won Cartwright Terry, from Cambridge.

Meanwhile, Te Kuiti shearer and former Royal Welsh Open winner Jack Fagan scored his first open final win in New Zealand at the Wairarapa A&P Show's Spring Shears near Carterton.

Fagan, son of shearing legend Sir David Fagan, who included six Wairarapa wins in a career total of 642 worldwide, capitalised on the absence of the country's shearing elite in Australia for the weekend, and emerged from a field of just nine entries, among whom only he and 2016 New Zealand Spring Shears winner Murray Henderson had ever won in open competition.

Also, New Zealand's best woolhandlers and blade shearers have taken payback by winning their transtasman test matches during the Australian national shearing and woolhandling champs in Bendigo.

In the two tests last night the world woolhandling champion New Zealand team of Gisborne pair Joel Henare and Maryanne Baty beat Australians Mel Morris and Sophie Huf, while South Canterbury blades shearers and World championships runners-up Tony Dobbs and Phil Oldfield wore their black singlets to triumph over the established Australian pairing of John Dalla and Ken French.

New Zealand has now won 39 of the 38 transtasman woolhandling tests since 1998, and all nine blades shearing tests since regular transtasman contests in the historic craft began in 2010.

Doug Laing is media officer for Shearing Sports NZ and an NZME journalist