New Zealand shearing team wins unprecedented World titles treble

New Zealand has become the first nation to win all three teams titles at a World shearing and woolhandling championships.

Bouncing back from not a single win in either teams or individual events at the last championships in Scotland in 2023, the Shearing Sports New Zealand team’s historic treble of the machine shearing, blades shearing and woolhandling titles came on Friday at the 2026 championships during the 64th Golden Shears in Masterton.

But none of it was easy, as was shown in the machine shearing win by Rowland Smith, of Maraekakaho, and Toa Henderson, of Kaiwaka (Northland), winning by just 0.277 points from the England team of Smith’s brother, Matt Smith, a Cornwall farmer, and Nick Greaves, a Devon shearer who works each New Zealand summer for Napier contractor Brendan Mahony.

New Zealand shearer Allan Oldfield, who won his third World title, i the teams final on Friday night, and hopes to be going for a fourth on Saturday night. He won both individual and teams titles in France in 2019.
Photo / Golden Shears.

South Canterbury blades shearers Allan Oldfield and Tony Dobbs won shearing’s version of an All Blacks-Springboks test match with victory by just 1.228 points from South African shearers Bonile Rabela, the reigning individual champion, and Teboho Nyatsa.

But in the woolhandling, the New Zealand team of Joel Henare, from Gisborne, and international rookie Marika Braddick, of Eketahuna, the margin was more decisive, with victory by more than 52 points from the New Zealand-based Cook Islands team of Keryn Herbert, of Te Kuiti, and Tina Elers, of Mataura.

A Cook Islands team of Noel Gardiner, of Whanganui, and Max Winders, of Invercargill, won the championships’ first-ever B final, in machine shearing.

The blades final had the near-capacity crowd in Masterton’s War Memorial Stadimu enthralled as Rabele fought back on the last of the six sheep.

With the black singlet in front from the start in the six-team contest of six sheep per team, Oldfield mastered the three perendales, while Nyatsa faced some struggles with one of his sheep.

Dobbs continued the job after the changeover to the three long wool crossbred sheep, and went in for the last about half-a-minute up, but Rabele captivated the crowd as he hit the smooth track down the last side, sometimes as clean as if it was a machine handpiece, and there was under five seconds in it at the end.

The woolhandling was run as a two-heat final, with New Zealand facing the England pair of Jess Parkhouse and 2014 individual champion Hilary Bond-Harding, and the Alexandra mother-and-daughter Gabriela Schmidt-Morrell and Charis Morrell, representing Schmidt-Morrell’s native Switzerland.

In the second, Cook Islands faced challenges from the strong Australian pairing of Racheal Hutchinson and Alexander Schoff. and the Falkland Islands.

Matt Smith set a cracking pace against his brother in the first half of the machine shearing final of 16 sheep per team, and while Henderson worked hard to close the gap in the latter stages there was still about 44 seconds in at the end as England clocked a time of 15min 28.93sec.

But the Kiwis had the better quality and regained a title New Zealand last won in 2017, in Invercargill.

Rowland Smith, who claimed a World teams machine shearing title woith Toa Henderson.
Photo / Golden Shears.

A rare World champion from Eketahuna, Marika Braddick on the way to New Zealand's win in the World teams fina.
Photo / Golden Shears.