South Island shearer Leon Samuels is off to the World Championships in Scotland in June. Photo / Peter Nikolaison
South Island shearer Leon Samuels is off to the World Championships in Scotland in June. Photo / Peter Nikolaison
A South Island-dominated crew of six has been confirmed in the Wools of New Zealand Shearing Sports New Zealand team for this year’s Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships.
They are machine shearers Rowland Smith, of Maraekakaho, near Hastings, and Leon Samuels, of Roxburgh in Central Otago, South Canterbury blades shearers and defending World Champions Allan Oldfield, from Geraldine, and Tony Dobbs, of Fairlie, and woolhandlers Candy Hiri, of Gore, and Ngaio Hanson, of Eketahuna.
The Championships, the 19th since the first shearing-only championships in England in 1977, will be held at the Royal Highland Show at Islington, Edinburgh, on June 22-25.
The team will be managed by Ronny King, of Pahiatua, and New Zealand will send two other officials - shearing judge Don Johnston, Five Forks, near Oamaru, and woolhandling judge Janet Smith, of Becks, Central Otago.
Smith, who won the 2014 world machine-shearing final in Ireland, secured a chance to regain the title when he won the Golden Shears open final (for an eighth time) in Masterton on March 4.
Samuels, originally from Mangakino but based mainly in Southland, claimed his place on April 1, when he became the first South Island shearer to win the Te Kuiti New Zealand Shears open final in 30 years.
Coincidentally, their partnership is already established, as last month the pair shore three matches for New Zealand against a Wales development team in the North Island, for which they were selected based on performances in the Covid-disrupted 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Oldfield and Dobbs have been together as a team since 2019 when Oldfield won the world individual title in France.
The pair won the teams title and claimed their places again in a series in the South Island, which ended at the Mackenzie Shears in Fairlie on Monday.
Woolhandlers Hiri and Hanson won their places in a selection series final at the Golden Shears in Masterton, also on March 4.
The Championships holds extra significance for all six, with Smith shearing against his brother and Cornwall farmer Matthew Smith, who will represent England, and Samuels out to emulate the feat of fellow Southland shearer and mentor Nathan Stratford, who won a teams title in Invercargill in 2017.
Oldfield and Dobbs are defending their titles, and Hiri and Hanson are each representing New Zealand for the first time, and defending the teams’ title won by Sheree Alabaster and Pagan Karauria in France.
Image 1 of 9: Hawke's Bay shearer Rowland Smith, pictured in March in Masterton, where he won an eighth Golden Shears open shearing title, and a place at the World Championships in Scotland in June, hoping to regain a title he won in Ireland in 2014. Photo / Peter Nikolaison
New Zealand has dominated the championships over the years with eight shearers collectively claiming 12 of the 18 machine shearing individual titles, and also 12 of the team titles - along with five of the 10-times individual woolhandling titles, along with the woolhandling team title all but one of the eight times it has been contested.
The 2019 blades titles were the first won by shearers outside Lesotho or South Africa – the two nations who have dominated the event over the past 11 championships, since it was introduced in Masterton in 1996.
New Zealand has twice had a clean sweep of the four machine shearing and woolhandling titles, in Norway in 2008 and Invercargill in 2017.
Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman Sir David Fagan, who won the individual machine shearing title a record five times, said it was exciting for the championships to be back again after a one-year postponement because of the global pandemic.
He said that while New Zealand had traditionally dominated the titles, the competition was getting tougher and tougher as the rest of the world caught up.
“That’s been very evident over the last 10-12 years,” he said.
