Blades Shearers Invasion Set For Kaikoura A&P Show

One of the biggest gatherings of blades shearers in New Zealand in many years is expected at the Kaikoura A&P Show on Saturday in their last shakedown before next week’s Golden Shears World championships in Masterton.

Scott McKay, a New Zealand representative in two transtasman blade shearing test matches in October and who lives at Clarence, about 40km north of Kaikoura, said 22 blades shearers are expected, including six New Zealanders, with about 6-7 seven other countries represented.

He understands 10 will be crossing Cook Strait, most understood to have been at a course run by New Zealand blades shearer, title challenger and 2019 champion Allan Oldfield on Wednesday at Rewa Rewa Station, Tinui, east of Masterton.

Oldfield said the course had 11 blades shearers, from seven countries.

They’re blades shearing numbers not seen in New Zealand since 22 contested the 2017 World championships in Invercargill, while 19 entered the 2012 championships in Masterton.

Last year there were 25 competitors at the Kaikoura show, across four classes of machine shearing.

In the heyday, the show was a stop-off point for southern guns on the way to Masterton for the Golden Shears during the following week, including Southland shearer Nathan Stratford, whose win in the 1998 machines final was his only one in his first season in the Open grade, and the first of a career tally now in the 90s.

McKay is determined to make it special on what Metservice is forecasting will be a fine day, with a maximum temperature of 18C, about the same as it was in the area mid-evening on Wednesday.

He’s acquired an impressive-looking trophy, which he says is “for the winner of the 2026 blades final”, and he wants to see as many as possible from the fraternity of the recent decades of New Zealand blades shearing, which has been all-but exclusively in the South Island, even if only to support and encourage all of those preparing for the World Championships and the annual Golden Shears on Wednesday-Saturday next week.

The first known blades shearing competition in New Zealand known to Shearing Sports New Zealand was in 1868.

There’s a big week and a half ahead for the shearing sports, with the Taumarunui Shears on Friday (7am start), the Apiti Sports Shears (7.30am), and the Kaikoura show (11am) on Saturday, and the Pahiatua Shears (8am) and the Wairarapa Pre-Shears Woolhandling (8am) on Sunday.

The World Championships and Golden Shears have attracted over 600 shearers and woolhandlers, including about 120 from 27 countries entered in the World title events.

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