Australian National Shearing and Woolhandling Championships to resume in October

Nathan Stratford, of Invercargill, shearing for New Zealand against Australia at historic sheep station Errowanbang, NSW, in 2014. He is expected to make his 15th transtasman test match appearance in Bendigo, Victoria, in October. Photo / SSNZ

A transtasman shearing competition that dates back 48 years will resume this October, after two years of cancellations due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Shearing Sports New Zealand (SSNZ) team of three machine shearers, two blades shearers and two woolhandlers will face tests against Australia on the first day of the October 21-22 Australian National Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Bendigo, Victoria.

It will be New Zealand's first international shearing sports competition since the Kiwis won the machine shearing and woolhandling tests at the Golden Shears in Masterton in 2020 - just a fortnight before the country went into lockdown in the Government's first big attempt to block the spread of Covid-19.

With the usual sequence of team selection events broken, the SSNZ national committee decided on the new team on August 15.

The first two machine shearers on the team are 2021 PGG Vetmed national shearing circuit winner Leon Samuels and 2022 winner and fellow Invercargill shearer Nathan Stratford.

It will be Stratford's 15th transtasman test, and Samuels' first.

The third team member will be the best-placed other New Zealand competitor in the open final at the New Zealand Merino Shears, which starts the 2022-2023 SSNZ season in Alexandra on September 30-October 1.

So far the blades team comprises of 2021 Christchurch Golden Blades winner and 2019 world champion Allan Oldfield, of Geraldine.

The second team member will be the open blades winner at the Waimate Spring Shears on October 7-8.

The woolhandlers will come from the 2021 and 2022 Merino Shears open finals.

The 2021 final was won by Joel Henare, of Gisborne, who has contested a woolhandling series record of 14 tests

Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman Sir David Fagan said the team would be confirmed at the Merino Shears.

Annual home-and-away machine shearing tests at Euroa, Victoria each October and the Golden Shears in Masterton started in Australia in 1974.

Industrial issues in Australia ended the contests 10 years later, but they resumed in 1997, with Australian legs rotating among venues of the Australian championships.

Woolhandling was added in 1998, and blades shearing began regular transtasman tests in 2010, with New Zealand legs held at either Christchurch or Waimate.

At the time the pandemic started, Australia held the ascendancy in machine shearing with 36 wins in 67 tests but New Zealand was on top in the woolhandling, with wins in 34 of the 44 tests, and New Zealand had won all 13 blades shearing tests.