NZ V Wales Shearing Test This Weekend

They may be the best of mates but there’s revenge in the air as New Zealand and Wales in a shearing test match at the Waimarino Shears in Raetihi on Saturday.

New Zealand shearers David Buick and Jack Fagan will be out to get the black singlet on top again when they line-up in a shear of 20 sheep each against Gethin Lewis and Llyr Jones.

In Te Kuiti last April the Welshmen scored Wales’ first shearing-test win in New Zealand, over Masterton shearers David Gordon and Paerata Abraham, and three months later beat the new Kiwi team of Buick and Fagan at Cothi in the first match of a series Wales won 2-1 in Wales, with Lewis joined by 2019 World champion Richard Jones for the last two clashes.

A three-test series is ahead with the second test at the Waitomo Caves Sports on March 22 and the third onn March 28 at the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti.

Buick, who has shorn 20 test matches for New Zealand, including 14 against Wales, won his place in the 2024-2025 team by claiming the New Zealand Shears Open title last year in his first win since a crippling farm accident in October 2021.

He says that with different breeds and different sheep there’s the need to make sure the team wins in its home conditions.

He warns both Welshmen have worked in New Zealand for several summers and have become accustomed to New Zealand sheep and conditions.

Lewis achieved one of the highest UK placings ever in the Golden Shears Open - 18th in the Top 30 quarterfinal shootout – and Buick also saw plenty of Jones in a display of shearing’s global camaraderie when he was in the Welshman’s pen for Lewis’ part in a two-stand lambs record attempt near Masterton in December.

With five wins behind him this season, Buick’s form continued at the Golden Shears, where he reached the Open final for an eighth time since 2014, and was runner-up for a second time.

“There are a lot of variables at Golden Shears and there are always big upsets,” he said, explaining the disappearance of several prominent contenders before the final, and regarding it as another learning experience in an event that require the package to be all together on the same night.

As well as the test series, he also turns to the defence of his NZ Shears title and a longer-term goal of winning one of the two machine shearing places in the New Zealand team for next year’s World championships in Masterton, and of course the World title, and winning a Golden Shears title along the way.

Fagan will be shearing his eighth test since qualifying for his place in the tests against Wales by winning last year’s New Zealand Shears Circuit final.

He shore the five on last year’s northern tour, and also in a three-man New Zealand team in the transtasman series of two losses to Australia, in West Australia last October and at the Golden Shears in Masterton earlier this month.

Another feature of the Waitomo Shears will be the final of the new Te Whiringa Senior Shearing Circuit, the culmination of 10 competitions aimed at creating more competitions for Senior shearers as they prepare to enter the Open grade.

The final is shaping as an unofficial Senior grade test match between New Zealand and England, with the top four qualifiers being English shearers Callum Bosley and Jack Hutchinson and New Zealanders Bruce Grace and Laura Bradley.

The shearing, in five grades, with about 110 shearers, will start with the Novice heats from 8am, with a full day programme followed by a speed shear at night.

The Waimarino Shears is one of three shearing competition shows on Saturday, the others being the Warkworth A and P Show north of Auckland and the Methven Lamb Shears at the Methven A and P Show, each starting at 10am.

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