New Zealand’s top shearers and woolhandlers are descending on Southland for two competitions on Friday and Saturday set to have significant impacts in deciding who represents New Zealand in the machine shearing and woolhandling at the 20th  Golden Shears World championships in seven weeks’ time.

The latest legs will be on Friday at the Northern Southland Community Shears’ New Zealand Full Wool Crossbred Shearing Championships at Selbie’s Woolshed, Lowther, near Lumsden, and at the Winton A and P Show’s Southland Shears and New Zealand Crossbred Lambs Championships on Saturday.

The year-long selection series’, based on performances in Open-class competitions, started at the Southern Shears in Gore last February, aiming to decide two machine shearers and two woolhandlers for the World championships being held in association with the 64th annual Golden Shears in Masterton on March 4-7.

They will complete the makeup of the New Zealand team with blades shearers Tony Dobbs, of Fairlie, and Allan Oldfield, from Geraldine, having secured their places in November, setting them on target to try to regain the teams title they won in France in 2019, when Oldfield was also the individual blades shearing champion.

Joel Henare, who won World individual and teams titles at the 2012 championships in Masterton and 2017 championships in Inverecargill, pictured winning his latesty Golden Shears Open title in Masterton last March. Photo / Pete Nikolaison. 

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The machine shearing and woolhandling teams will be named at the Rangitikei Shearing Sports in Marton on February 7, and become part of an amassing of representatives from 28 countries at the World Championships.

The Lumsden and Winton competitions are in all classes from Junior to Open, and part of the biggest weekend on the Shearing Sports New Zealand Calendar, with events at six venues nationwide.

The others are all shearing-only A and P show events at Kaikohe, Wairoa and Takaka on Saturday, and on Sunday in Levin.

It’s also part of a big few days in the south, with a four-stand women’s lambshearing record for eight hours taking place on Tuesday at Melrose Station, Owaka, South Otago.

On January 31, a three-stand men’s record will be attempted at Waihelo Station, Moa Flat, West Otago.