MEDIA RELEASE

On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand

November 4, 2013

Alabaster eyes-up World Champs hopes again  

Taihape woolhandler Sheree Alabaster took a confidence-boosting step towards a possible return to Shearing Sports New Zealand’s World Championships team by beating her leading rivals in the Open final at the Wairarapa A and P Show on Saturday.

Winner of the World title in Norway in 2008, 37-year-old Alabaster despatched defending World champion Joel Henare, of Gisborne,  to the position of runner-up in a three-person final at the Clareville Showgrounds, on the outskirts of Carterton.

Henare headed a healthy original field of 23 as it was culled to six for the semi-finals, which proved the end of the road for the day for defending event champion, national Open woolhandling rankings supremo and Te Awamutu competitor Keryn Herbert, who in 2010 partnered Alabaster to a World teams title in Wales.

On Saturday, Herbert just missed qualifying for the final in which Alabaster, Henare and Dannevirke’s Rocky Hape-Taite each recorded 67 points on board judging. Henare held an advantage on time and in selection of oddments, but Alabaster cleared the better fleeces and won by 10pts.

The event was the fourth of 10 in a selection series from which eight woolhandlers will contest the finals at the Golden Shears in Masterton in March, the winner and runner-up to represent New Zealand two months later at the World Championships in Gorey, Ireland.

Pongaroa farmer David Buick also scored a confidence-boosting win in the Open shearing final at Saturday’s show, beating in-form Waipawa shearer Cam Ferguson

A week earlier, he had shown his preparedeness for battle this summer by finishing third to New Zealand transtasman series team members John Kirkpatrick and Rowland Smith, both of Hawke’s Bay, in the Australian Romney Shears crossbreds final at Warrnambool, Vic. Last season he won only the second and third Open titles of his career, missed the Golden Shears because of a friend’s wedding, and was third in the New Zealand Championships Open final.

Ferguson had already scored two wins this season in a build-up to a late-season Golden Shears and New Zealand Championships showdown aimed at selection for a third World Championships. He was runner-up to New Zealand-based Scotsman Gavin Mutch in Masterton in 2012 after winning the title two years earlier at the Royal Welsh Show.

Third on Saturday was Paerata Abraham, of Dannevirke, and Murray Henderson, of Feilding, was fourth, having finished third in Ferguson’s Great Raihania Shears win at the Hawke’s Bay Show eight days earlier.

ENDS