A Goldies Ribbon A A Nurse's Day Off

It can be said that Eleri Bradley’s family are into the shearing sports hard-core. Twin brother Tegwyn won the Golden Shears Intermediate and Senior shearing titles, sister Laura is in the books as Novice woolhandling champion in 2020, and mum Helen is there too, as Junior woolhandling champion in 1995.

But at 28 years old, and now also the Shears’ Novice woolhanding champion, Eleri Bradley does it as a hobby, something to give her a break from her job as a registered nurse, in theatre, at Palmerston North Hospital.

After struggling to convince workmates it’s a sport before she told them she was taking the day off on Thursday, she won the final and, if she chooses, might on her return on Friday flail the Goldies ribbon as proof – a Goldies ribbon the dream of the 370-plus at the three-day championships.

From the family farm at Papatawa, between Woodville and Dannevirke, she says workmates wondered what she meant, and when she showed some on von-line clips from competitions, one said: “That looks quite easy.”

But it wasn’t, with the pressure on all the way from the opening day’s 7.45am start, Bradley finished second among the 22 in the heats, and after the semi-finals was top qualifier among the four hopefuls chasing the win on a buzz-filled opening day in Masterton’s War Memorial Stadium as the Golden Shears returned after two years of cancellations amid the restrictions of the global pandemic.

But for her nursing studies it might never have happened, for she says she only did any regular woolhandling in summer to pay her way “through Uni”.

In 2020 she entered a competition for the first time, just for “the fun of it” and the chance to be with the family at the Shears in 2020.

Then came Covid-19, and it wasn’t until four weeks ago that she returned to the competition table at the Dannevirke A and P Show, where she thought she “might as well” as she was already there helping out.

A Golden Shears dream sprang suddenly into focus when she won the Apiti Sports Novice final last Saturday, and decided: “I’ve got to enter the Goldies.”

King Country wool handlers Crystal Newton and Bryndyll Pinkham were second and third respectively, and fourth was Ana Mason, of Masterton.

It was also all about family as 14-year-old Maaka Nikora won the Novice shearing final, with uncles and cousins appearing from all corners and after he thrust his arm triumphantly in the air and gave a short speech with all the eloquence of someone who’d been doing it for years.

He was in only the first week of it, having first won at his home Taumarunui Shears last Friday, but wellwishers were soon reminding him of the Golden Shears triumph of “uncles” Rangi Nikora, who won the 1994 Intermediate title, and Robert Nikora, the Junior champion two years later.

His father’s shearing in Australia, but there’s some handy tutorship around Taumarunui to help guide a new prodigy, who first shore in a competition two years ago and who a week after his birthday in January shore 200 lambs for the first time.

He’s enjoying the “school of shearing” right now, and says “it’s in my blood”, but says he wants “to go back to school”, although the handpiece is still sharpened and at the ready for such events as the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti on March 30-April 1.

In Masterton he did it the hard way, the last of 12 semi-final qualifiers from 51 who shore in the heats, and then fifth of the six-making it into the final to shear two sheep each.

Central Hawke’s Bay farm training institution Smedley claimed bragging rights among the farmers of the future by winning the first title decided at the Golden Shears this year.

Second-year cadets Scott O’Connor, 19, from Tinui, and Benazzi Ward, 18, from Pirinoa, won the six-team MKM Student Shearing Challenge, claiming the Tikokino operation’s first win in the event and the first title to be decided at this year’s championships.

Pukemiro, a training farm just east of Dannevirke and which won the first two Student challenges at Golden Shears in 2019 and 2020, was runner-up, with its pairing of Zach Hall and Renee Garrett.

Acclaimed co-educational college Feilding High School, the former campus of such All Blacks as Aaron Smith and Sam Whitelock but also a campus with a shearing competition dating back over 30 years, was third, followed in order by Napier Boys High School, Palmerston North Boys High School, and Growing Future Farmers.

O’Connor and Ward also qualified for the Golden Shears Novice semi-finals but missed out on the top six for the final.

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