Wayne Perkins: Go Johnny Go

John Kirkpatrick in action earlier this year. Photo / Warren Buckland

When it comes right down to it and no matter what else I do, I still see myself as just a shearer.

You can take the man out of the shearing shed but you can never really take the shearing shed out of the man; there is something about what is arguably the world's most physically demanding job that gets under your skin and never quite goes away.

So it was, that late last night, having not touched or shorn a sheep for about six years, I sat on the couch in my lounge and watched the livestream of the World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships.

I had been born into the shearing industry in many ways.

My Dad was a shearer and my brothers were shearers and I had been brought up to rousie (wool-handle) from such time as I could reach across the shearing board.

I remember our class being asked at school what we wanted to be and I said "A shearer" and the teacher said "Is that all you want to be?" and I thought then as I think now that her comment was stupid, condescending and offensive and showed somehow a notion that teaching and other academic professions were better than manual work and trades.

That is nonsense of course, both teaching and shearing are good, honourable and respectable professions, one not better than the other, both just very different.

When I was eighteen I got the chance to become "just a shearer" and I grabbed the chance with everything I had and like countless shearers before me, I slogged it out for months, with a back that felt like molten lead was being poured down my spine and arms and hands that were in constant pain.

I made it through from sheer bloody-mindedness and the knowledge that the pain barrier was an integral part of the hardening up process for all shearers and developed that most essential trait that all the best shearers have in spades and that of course, is guts.

Guts goes by other names, stamina, bottle, apple and heart but perhaps the best description of guts is "a pig-headed unwillingness to accept anything other than everything" and in the shearing industry, guts was and Im sure still is, respected above all else.

As I watched the competition it brought back many memories and old familiar faces from what seems a previous lifetime evoked some nostalgic and warm feelings and for a brief moment I wondered if I should go and do another couple of years shearing.

However, vivid recollections of an alarm clock set for 4.30am quickly brought me back to reality.

The open final was all that you should expect a final to be and the winner on the night and new world champion was Johnny Kirkpatrick and I'm sure that there has seldom been a more popular and deserving winner.

Sometimes good guys finish first and that was very definitely the case last night as he stood there humble in victory, thanking his family and everyone involved.

I think it was his fourth or fifth attempt to win the worlds and surely it is a great testament to his character that after the previous disappointments, he picked himself back up and had another crack.

I guess that's all you can ever really do anyway and it brought to mind a scene from a Rocky movie where he says "It don't matter how many times you get knocked down, its how many times you get back up"

Johnny personifies that and he has done his family, industry and country proud and surely, in a country in desperate need of genuine role models, people would do well to look his way.

Well done John. Well done.