MEDIA RELEASE On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand October 14, 2010

Kiwis primed for wool board tests in three-day Aussie raid

New Zealand’s biggest-ever shearing and woolhandling team has crossed the Tasman determined to claim the first away test-match cleansweep over Australia in eight years in a remote corner of New South Wales on Saturday. A unique representation of small-town New Zealand, the team for the test at Hay, more than 700km west of Sydney, carries the regular transtasman series complement of three machine shearers and two woolhandlers, plus for the first time in an official match two blades shearers.

With New Zealand having not won a machine shearing test in Australia since a match in Esperance, West Australia, in 2002, the pressure is most on the current black singlet trio of new World champion Cam Ferguson, from Waipawa in Hawke’s Bay, and merino shearing trump cards Tony Coster and Grant Smith, both from Rakaia, in Canterbury. Joel Henare, from Gisborne, on the East Coast of the North Island, and Veronica (Ronnie) Goss, from Apiti, in Manawatu in the Central North Island, will, however, be going for New Zealand’s 10th consecutive transtasman woolhandling test win since the Kiwis’ last defeat on either side of the Tasman at Millicent, South Australia, in 2005.

The inaugural transtasman test blades shearers, World championship third placegetters and Canterbury shearers Brian Thomson,West Melton,and Allen Gemmell, of Leeston, follow in the footsteps of two others who won an unofficial test when the last Australian leg of the annual home-and-away series’ was held a year ago in Warialda, also in NSW. The tests will be held during Sportshear Australia’s national shearing and woolhandling championships, where the home team’s machine shearers will be last year’s national first and second placegetters Jason Wingfield, of Lexton, Vic, and Bill Hutchison, of Gilgandra, NSW, and former World champion Shannon Warnest, of Willalooka, South Australia.

The feature event will be shorn over eight merino ewes and eight crossbred ewe lambs for each shearer. The Australian woolhandlers areRacheal Hutchison, of Gilgandra, and South Australian competitor Tina Denholm, who was a meritorious sixth in the World Championships final in Wales in July. World championships blades shearers John Dalla and Nick Dennis were expected to be back together to take on the Kiwis, although the 21-year-old Dalla’s position is unclear because of injury.

ENDS