Meat tree helps butchers to win

A meat model of kauri giant Tane Mahuta helped push Team North Island to victory at the North vs South Island Battle of the Butchers in New Plymouth at the weekend.

Each team of five butchers had two hours to create a top-shelf butchery display using three chickens and sides of beef, pork and lamb.

Dion Puncheon from the Regent New World supermarket in Whangarei and Abigail Lane from Kaitaia Pak'n Save were on the winning team, whose display followed a North Island theme with models of the Waitomo Caves, Sky Tower and Mt Ruapehu matching Tane Mahuta.

Puncheon, 37, said the pressure was on from the minute the starting bell rang and the result was pretty close.

"It was like bulls out of a gate. I could see the guy doing the same job as me on the other team was super fast, and with 15 minutes to go I was actually running to do my kebabs," he said.

Lane, 27, was charged with creating special touches to seal the win.

"I was doing the value-added cuts of meat, so I made the Tane Mahuta trunk out of a bone and arranged the meat and parsley to make it look like a tree," she said.

The Sharp Blacks will travel to Britain next year to defend their Butchery Tri-Nations title and both Northland butchers fancy the international experience.

"I'd love to get over there," Puncheon said. "I've got a real taste for competition now."

Lane was just as keen. Asked how she felt as the only woman working among male butchers, she said: "I'm pretty used to it now and it makes me a little more determined to win."