New kiwi shears champ pips older bro in UK

MEDIA RELEASE

On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand

May 26, 2011

New kiwi shears champ pips older bro in UK

New national shearing champion Rowland Smith has hit early winning form on his first international tour in Britain by beating older brother Matthew in the final of the Devon County Open.

The Hawke's Bay-based Northland pair's quinella came on just the second weekend of the UK competition season which they opened at the Royal Ulster Show at Balmoral by finishing second and third to Christchurch-based Irish hero Ivan Scott.

Although having shorn successfully in Britain before, Rowland Smith is in the UK as a Shearing Sports New Zealand team member for the first time, and teams-up at the end of next month with Napier shearer and former Golden Shears champion Dion King for a series of eight test matches in four weeks, with two against Scotland, two against England and four against Wales. The first is at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh and the last at Corwen in Wales.

Rowland Smith claimed his place in the team by beating Golden Shears champion and favourite John Kirkpatrick in the New Zealand Open final in Te Kuiti in April.

His tour means he will miss this weekend's Hawke's Bay Sports Awards, at which he and third brother Doug are finalists in the Team of the Year category, recognising their World two-stand ewes record shorn in January. Other New Zealanders who figured in the weekend's finals were Te Kuiti teenager and 2010-2011 top-ranked New Zealand intermediate shearer Jack Fagan, who was fourth in the senior shearing final, and Golden Shears senior woolhandling winner and top women's wool-presser Fiona Christensen, of Masterton, who was fifth in her first open final, in which the runner-up was World champion Bronwen Tango, of Wales.

ENDS

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