NZ team wins shearing tour

Sheree Alabaster. Photo / Sarah Ivey

The New Zealand shearing and woolhandling team has ended its World Championships tour in the UK with a cleansweep of the six major events at the Corwen Shears in North Wales during the weekend.

Going straight from their success in winning three titles at the 14th Golden Shears World Championships during the Royal Welsh Show midweek, New Zealand beat Wales in three separate tests in in machine shearing, woolhandling and blades shearing while all three open class championships were also won by members of the team.

The wins were of some consolation to Taihape school teacher Sheree Alabaster who responded to defeat in her World Woolhandling title defence on Wednesday, by hammering new champion and Welsh heroine Bronwen Tango by almost 35 points.

Alabaster won the Corwen Shears title with 66 penalties, Stacey Mundell was second amassing 95.1 penalties, and Tango had to settle for third, with 100.8.

Alabaster and teammate Keryn Herbert, of Te Awamutu, also beat the new Welsh team of Menir Evans and Gwenan Paewai by almost 17pts in woolhandling test.

Veteran shearer David Fagan, of Te Kuiti, turned the tables on teammate and new World machine shearing champion Cam Ferguson from central Hawke's Bay, in a Kiwi quinella in the Corwen Shears open shearing final.

While having missed the big goal when second to Ferguson in the World Championships final on Wednesday, it was the 48-year-old Fagan's third individual win in nine days, his fourth of the tour, and the 603rd in an 28-year open-class career.

Fagan and Ferguson also beat Welshmen Gareth Daniels and Hwyl Jones by more than four points to complete a 4-0 machine shearing test series whitewash.

Canterbury blades shearers Allen Gemmell, of Loburn, and Brian Thomson, of West Melton, substantiated New Zealand's place as the best in their craft outside of Africa by also beating Wales in a test.

Gemmell also gained some compensation for missing a place in the World championships blades shearing final by winning the Corwen final.

Thomson repeated his championships placing of third, albeit in the absence of the Africans who dominated the world finals.

There was also some success for other New Zealanders, with John Kirkpatrick, of Napier, finishing fifth to Fagan and Ferguson in the open shearing final, while Fagan's son, Jack, extracted something from a week in which he failed to qualify for the intermediate finals at both the Royal Welsh Show and Corwen shows, by making his senior-class debut later at Corwen and finishing fourth.

- NZPA