Shear family effort

TALENT: Ricci Stevens is toughing it out at this year's Golden Shears in Masterton. PHOTO SUPPLIED

A Napier couple is looking towards a unique double at the Golden Shears in Masterton today, although not the one they were after.

Married last year, both-aged 25 and with eight-month-old son Carter as part of the support team, Ricci Stevens and wife Angela, daughter of new World champion shearer and four-times Golden Shears Open shearing shearing John Kirkpatrick, will be after a double in the Junior and Senior woolhandling events respectively.

"That's the goal, now," Ricci Stevens said last night, with a tinge of disappointment after failing to make the semi-final in target event the Senior shearing, thereby ending a dream of becoming one of the few and possibly the first to reach finals in all three shearing sports disciplines of shearing, woolhandling and woolpressing at one Golden Shears.

He did, however, last night have one ribbon on the shoulders, for finishing second tin the woolhandling pairs with fellow multi-discipliined shearer, woolhandler and presser Jimmy Samuels.

The couple's respective semi-finals are this morning, targeting a pace in the finals later in the day with Angela Stevens the favourite to win her event after winning the Southland All Nations Senior final in Invercargill three weeks ago.

The disappointment of missing his individual goal of a treble at the Shears was however barely visible for Ricci Stevens, originally from Gisborne and a graduate in sports exercise studies at Massey University before he took to the shearing game, under the now watchful eye of the parents-in-law now running a shearing gang in Napier, where the focus is on quality at work as well as in competition.

"Johnny tries to make us shear in the shed as we would at a show," he said. Despite his early ejection from the Senior shearing, he said: "I'm happy."

Hawke's Bay will have some strong other hopes on the last day today, particularly in the Junior final, for which the top qualifier is Mark Ferguson, of Elsthorpe.

Steve Hakaraia, of Napier, and Keith Swann, of Wairoa, also made the top six, as did Norwegian Anne-Lise Humstad, who works in Dannevirke.

Paul Swann, of Wairoa, is Hawke's Bay only survivor in the Senior shearing event, with Ricci Stevens and well-performed Paraki Puna, of Napier, both eliminated in the heats.