International whitewash for Kiwis

A kiwi whitewash of international events at the Golden Shears was achieved on Saturday night when the New Zealand Shearing Team just managed to pip a strong Australian contingent.
Having dispatched Australian woolhandlers and Welsh shearing representatives earlier at the competitions, the Saturday victory brought about the perfect 3 - nil result.
On finals night Australia lined up Damien Boyle, Jason Wingfield and Shannon Warnest to pit their collective skills against James Fagan, John Kirkpatrick and Nathan Stratford.
Each shearer had to shear six merinos, three long wool and three second shear sheep.
It was a gripping encounter and was in the balance until quality points clinched the win for New Zealand.
Wingfield and Fagan set the contest alight going head-to-head until the last sheep was out of the pen.
James Fagan, known as the pocket rocket because of his small, strong statue, relishes his work often breaking out into wide grins that delight the crowd.
He was the first to bounce across to Wingfield and shake his hand having, of course, just got the better of the much bigger Aussie.
To be fair the Australians were under a slight handicap as Boyle is a specialist merino shearer and laboured somewhat when it came to getting the fleece off cross-breds.
He later said he hadn't shorn a cross-bred for seven years, so his effort was fairly remarkable.
After the test the shearers extended a helping hand to tetraplegic former champion woolpresser Warwick Goodger.
Signed singlet and towels, trousers and shearing moccasins used during the test were auctioned off, raising $300 for the Warwick Goodger Trust.
Goodger was seriously hurt in a car crash a year ago.
The crowd at the shears got in behind what the shearers had done, collectively donating $2800 in a bucket collection circulated round the stadium, also for the trust set up to help Goodger financially.
A major project for the trust is to establish a permanent home for him in Masterton now that he has returned from rehabilitation in Burwood Hospital's spinal unit.
Getting into the action to help Goodger was a "Shrek-like" ram that had been rescued from its reclusive lifestyle with better than three years wool aboard.
The ram had to be helped to the shearing area by four people before being relieved of its massive wool load by expert blade shearer Peter Race, of Timaru.
Race was helped in his efforts by Billy Michelle, both being members of the New Zealand team that went to Norway last year.
A competition held to correctly guess the weight of the fleece to be removed from the ram was won by James Morris with proceeds from the gold-coin entry donation going to the Warwick Goodger Trust.
For the record the fleece weighed 11.5 kilogrammes.
Blade shearing is somewhat of a dying art being mostly confined to high country merinos in the South Island.
Peter Race said there are only 50 or so blade shearers now, shearing collectively around 500,000 merinos a year.
He said the " shrek-like" ram had sat well and behaved.
"He was a good boy."