MEDIA RELEASE
From Doug Laing, media officer, Shearing Sports New Zealand
February 28, 2014
Seven's star Sarah's the Goss as Golden Shears hypes-up big second day
The hopes of one of New Zealand top women’s rugby players shearing at the Golden Shears in Masterton tonight were still
in abeyance today despite her withdrawal from the invitation event she won last year.
Having at one-stage accepted the invitation, Sevens vice-captain Sarah Goss, who grew up in a shearing family on a farm
near Kimbolton in northern Manawatu, had to turn down the chance because of a change in travel plans related to her
commitments to IRB tournaments overseas.
But mother Ronnie Goss, the 2008 Golden Shears Open woolhandling champion who is among the six scheduled to shear the
event tonight, said the busy student-shearer-rugby player’s itinerary had changed again, and she might still be able to
get to the Golden Shears, where she has been the only woman to shear in three finals – Novice runner-up in 2007 and
third in the 2010 Junior and 2012 Intermediate events.
“She can take my place if she likes,” she said, as she prepared for her own big challenges, this year’s Open
woolhandling championship and a World Championships New Zealand team selection trial.
The first rounds of those events are being held during the day, along with heats in the glamour event, the Open shearing
championship, as well as heats in the Senior shearing championship.
Ronnie Goss is not the only member of the Goss family with eyes on a winning ribbon, for teenaged son Simon is the
second-to-top qualifier for today’s Intermediate shearing championship semi-finals, hoping to reach tomorrow’s final and
ultimately emulate the feat of his father, Alan Goss, who won the title in 1985.
Tiny Kimbolton already has a place in this year’s honours, after 15-year-old Connor Puha’s Novice shearing final win
yesterday, with a prospect of even more as tomorrow, as top qualifier for the Senior woolhandling seemi-finals, he
attempts to become the first person to win Golden Shears titles in both of the disciplines.
The women’s event is one feature of the evening which culminates today’s programme which started at 7.45am and isn’t
expected to end till 10pm.
Other features of the night programme, expected to watched by a capacity crowd in the stadium where the Goldies began in
1961, are a transtasman woolhandling test, the Open shearing’s Top 30 quarterfinal shootout, and the men’s and women’s
woolpressing finals.
An annual home-and-away woolhandling series between New Zealand and Australia started in 1998, and has been dominated by
the Kiwis, who’ve won 23 of the 31 tests. But Australia have won three of the last four, including two wins in New
Zealand..
The New Zealand team of Keryn Herbert, of Te Awamutu, and Tia Potae, of Milton, will be out to atone for their defeat in
Warrnambool, Vic., in October and will be up against Australia’s World Championships combination of Mel Morris, from
Cressy, Tas., and Sarah Moran, of Ararat, Vic.
The latest test in a shearing series which started 40 years ago will be shorn tomorrow night.
ENDS