South Canterbury farmer Tony Dobbs is set to make a bid for a world-first 100th Open blade shearing title this week by returning to where it all started more than 40 years ago, at the 53rd Waimate Spring Shears.

But the 58-year-old from Fairlie is not going to the shear on Friday and Saturday with any great expectations, saying he’s barely shorn a sheep with the blades since he and fellow South Canterbury shearer Allan Oldfield won their world titles in France 15 months ago.

Most of his shearing since the big triumphs was about 200 of his own lambs with a machine handpiece during the Covid lockdown earlier this year.

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While determined not to “go out on 99”, he says he hasn’t been able to prepare for this year’s Waimate Shears, which open the 2020-2021 Shearing Sports New Zealand season.

But he will be there judging, and has paid the entry fee to shear, so he “may as well.”

He says he first shore at the Waimate Shears in 1979, and he’s won the Open blade shearing title 12 times, one more than the number of times Sir David Fagan won the Waimate Shears Open machine shearing title.

Dobbs has also won the Canterbury Show’s Golden Blade New Zealand Corriedale championship 18 times in 23 attempts, a formline he notes would beat anything else in the Christchurch show and cups week.

In 2013 he came out of a retirement of more than a decade to start a successful bid to represent New Zealand at the next year’s World Championships in Ireland, and hit the road running with the first of four more consecutive Golden Blades titles.

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On his chances this week, and appreciating that time does march on, he said: “I’ve come back before, and managed to pull something out of the bag…”

As for pulling down the blinds on the career, he says he’s not going to say he’s finishing when he gets win No 100.

If it doesn’t happen this week, there’s always the Canterbury Shears, which will this year be held on November 5-6 at Marble Point, near Hanmer Springs, having been brought forward a week at the alternative venue after the cancellation of this year’s Canterbury show (the New Zealand Agricultural Show).

There is also the next World championships, at the Royal Highland Show’s 200th anniversary in Edinburgh in 2020.

“Who knows?” said Dobbs.

Sheep being sorted for the national Winter Comb title event at the Waimate Spring Shears. Photo: Waimate Shears

More than 170 shearers and wool handlers are expected in Waimate for the first event of the New Zealand shearing sports season.

It is one of the first major events on the rural sports and shows calendar since the Covid-19 lockdown.

It will include both the first and second rounds of Open shearing’s National Circuit McSkimming Memorial Triple Crown series, the resurrection of the New Zealand Open and Senior winter comb titles and, for the first time, the South Island Woolhandling Circuit finals.

The inclusion of the winter comb and wool handling circuit means 17 individual titles will be decided, including the Friday-night wool handling Fleece Throw, clean shear and seed shear events, and the regular competition in five machine-shearing grades, two in blade shearing, and three in wool handling.

Most of New Zealand’s top competitors have entered, including several current or former world champions.

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The numbers mean that busy programmes of more than 12 hours on each day are in store for Waimate Shears president and chairman Warren White, his committee, judges, and stadium staff, with start times of 7am on Friday and 7.30am on Saturday. 

Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman Sir David Fagan said that with the Covid crisis leading to the cancellation of several shows and competitions at the end of last season and pre-Christmas in the new season entries at Waimate “just show that everyone just wants to get out there and compete.”

“Given all the difficulties, which most people planning events of any sort throughout New Zealand are facing, the Waimate Shears committee has done an incredible job getting this all together,” he said.

Further details are on the facebook page Waimate Shears NZ Spring Shearing Competition.

Story supplied by Doug Laing, media officer, Shearing Sports New Zealand