Hawke's Bay shearing gun still tops in the south

On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand

January 16, 2011

Hawke's Bay shearing gun still tops in the south

It may have been a thousand kilometres from home but Hawke's Bay shearer John Kirkpatrick was right at home as he cleaned-up the two major titles in the deep south at the weekend, for at least the fourth time.

Kirkpatrick won the Northern Southland Community Shears longwool open title in Lumsden on Friday and the New Zealand Crossbred Lambs title at the Winton A and P Show on Saturday - the third time he has claimed the double since the lambs title was resurrected in 2009. He had also won the double the last time the lambs title was shorn before its recess, at Riversdale in 2003.

The two wins extended the 40-year-old's Golden Shear's champion's record in New Zealand this season to five out of five, also including the NZ Corriedale Championship at the Canterbury Show in November, and the national lambshearing title at Raglan last week.

A feature of the two finals was the performance of World champion Cam Ferguson just days after setting a World eight-hour lambshearing record in a King Country woolshed. On Friday he was fourth behind Kirkpatrick, Southlander Darrin Ford and King Country icon David Fagan, and on Saturday he was beaten only by Kirkpatrick and Fagan, whose teenaged son, Jack, completed an intermediate lambs double, having also won at Raglan the previous weekend.

Ferguson was also the top invididual as he and David Fagan beat a United Kingdom team of Gavin Mutch and Ian Montgomery by almost 15 points on Saturday in the first match of a three-test series.

Starting their tour with a provincial match the previous day at Lumsden, Mutch and Montgomery were beaten by Southland shearers Alton Devery and Chas Tohiariki.

The best of the South Island shearers in the lambs final on Saturday was Jason Win, of Reefton, who was fourth. On the same day, his father, Sam, a 55-year-old who was the eldest competitor in last month's Piker River mine disaster charity speedshear in Reefton, won the Golden Bay A and P Show open final in Motueka.

Kirkpatrick was not the only shearer to score a double in Southland, with Masterton shearer Matene Mason, 19, winning both senior finals.

In Northern Hawke's Bay, 2006 Golden Shears open champion Dion King, of Napier, capitalised on the absence of his top rivals by winning Saturday's Wairoa A and P Show open final, with 24-year-old Hawke's Bay-based Far North shearer Rowland Smith second just four days after a shearing in a two-stand eight-hour ewes record.

Meanwhile, national representatives Joel Henare, of Gisborne, and Keryn Herbert, of Te Awamutu, continued their marches towards recognition as Master woolhandlers as they dominated the Open woolhandling finals. Henare won at Lumsden, repeating a win from last season, and Herbert reversed the order the next day at Winton. Bernadette Forde, of Tuatapere, was third in both finals.

ENDS

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