Golden Shears: Hawke’s Bay farmer Bart Hadfield to manage New Zealand team

Shearing Sports New Zealand team manager Bart Hadfield.

Award-winning northern Hawke’s Bay farmer Bart Hadfield has been named as a late replacement to manage the Shearing Sports New Zealand team at the 20th Golden Shears Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Masterton on March 4-7.

Hadfield, who is also a shearing competitions judge and former record-breaking shearer, takes the place of the original selection, Lance Waddell, who was unable to take up the appointment.

Shearing Sports New Zealand congratulated all seven who “put their hands up” at short notice as candidates to manage the team of six, which will comprise two machine shearers, two blade shearers and two woolhandlers.

Hadfield has been a shearing judge for 21 years and officiated at the 2019 World Championships in France.

He also officiated at a successful three-stand, eight-hour strongwool lambs world record attempt in West Otago at the weekend.

As a shearer, he has been a Golden Shears open semi-finalist and was part of a crew that set a world three-stand lambs record for nine hours in 1997.

A son and daughter have also been competitive shearers.

In 2015, Hadfield and his wife, Nukuhia Hadfield, won the Ahuwhenua Trophy for Māori excellence in sheep and beef farming for their running of Mangaroa Station, off the inland route between Wairoa and Gisborne.

They were also organisers of the Wairoa A&P Show shearing championships for several years.

Hadfield was a delegate to Shearing Sports New Zealand’s national committee for several terms, before standing down last year.

Hadfield was surprised by the appointment, given what he understood of the high quality of contenders for the position of manager.

He said he and his wife had been planning to be “just spectators” at the World Championships.

Four of the six team members have already been named.

They are the 2019 world champion South Canterbury blade-shearing pair Allan Oldfield and Tony Dobbs, and Golden Shears machine-shearing and woolhandling champions Toa Henderson, of Kaiwaka (Northland) and Joel Henare, of Motueka, respectively.

The remaining machine shearer and woolhandler will be named after the selection series finals at the Rangitīkei Shearing Sports North Island Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Marton on Saturday.