Kiwi Shearing Guns Out To Lance Aussie Boyle

MEDIA RELEASE

On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand

October 3, 2012

NZ Merino Shearing Championships, at Alexandra, October 5-6.

Kiwi Shearing Guns Out To Lance Aussie Boyle

New Zealand’s top shearers are gathering in Alexandra in a bid stop an Australian invader claiming New Zealand’s only finewool Open championship for a third year in a row.

Damian Boyle, from Broomehill, West Australia, is among more than 40 shearers entered in the Open heats which will be shorn on the opening morning of the two-day 51st New Zealand Merino Shearing Championships on Friday.

He won last year’s 50th anniversary title comfortably from local hope and runner-up Colin O’Neill, and third placed Invercargill shearer Nathan Stratford.

Boyle first won the title in 2010, beating runner-up Grant Smith, of Rakaia, Charlie O’Neill, of Alexandra, and Stratford, who was fourth defending the title he had won 12 months earlier.

Stratford will be keen to regain the title, to capitalise on the experience of his New Zealand team experience in Britain, where he produced a stunning effort to win the Corwen Open on welsh lambs in his last competition in July.

Touring teammate John Kirkpatrick is travelling from Napier, but like most North Island shearers lesser-experienced on the tough merino sheep of the south is likely to be content to claim a point in the only compulsory round of the PGG Wrightson National Championship, the country’s premier multi-wools event.

Fellow Hawke’s Bay shearer Cam Ferguson, with whom Kirkpatrick won the teams title at the World Championships in Masterton eight months ago will be better prepared, having been working in Central Otago for the last two months.

Marlborough shearer Angus Moore, who cracked the big-time by winning the national final last season, will be among others lining-up in Alexandra, with Boyle among up to five Australians expected for either the Open or Senior events.

Further rounds in the national series will be the following week at Waimate (long strongwool), next month in Christchurch (corriedale), Raglan in January (lambs), and Pahiatua in February (second shear), the top 12 from the series qualifying for the finals during the Golden Shears in Masterton in March.

The first of 61 competitions scheduled for the Shearing Sports New Zealand season, the Alexandra championships also include battles for the national Open, Senior and Junior finewool woolhandling titles.

Gisborne’s new World champion woolhandler, Joel Henare, who went to school in Cromwell, will be particularly keen to claim his first NZ finewool championships title, having been runner-up in 2010 and 2011.

Reigning finewool champion, mentor and Australia-based Whanganui woolhandler Joanne Kumeroa, whom Henare beat in the World final in Masterton in March, was not among entries received by earlier this week.

The events will also be important for Kirkpatrick, Moore and the best New Zealander in Saturday’s Open shearing final, and woolhandlers Sheree Alabaster and Rocky Hape-Taite. They will represent New Zealand in a transtasman test in Warrnambool, Vic., at the end of this month.

ENDS

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