General News
3 November, 2025
Sharp shearing lands local Green and Gold
REALISING a long-term shearing dream on October 26 in South Australia was Daniel Rogers, a 33-year-old from Telangatuk East.
By achieving a top-two finish in the National Blade Shearing final at the 2025 Shearing and Woolhandling National Championships in Jamestown, he “got the job done” and qualified for the Australian team to compete at the Golden Shears World Championships early next year.
“I am pumped to receive a green and gold jacket and to be representing Australia,” he said.
“Every three years they have a world championship, and next year it's in New Zealand at Masterton. Australia sends over six representatives, two machine shearers, two blade shearers and two wool handlers.
“I've been working on it for a while. Three years ago, I made my first nationals, and came in about fourth or something, and then I've been working on it since then.
Daniel said he had to skip last year’s nationals, and with good reason – “my daughter was born that weekend” – but was pleased to realise an important goal at the very next opportunity, coming second only to John Dalla from South Australia.
“I was pretty focused on trying to make the team this year,” he said.
He said he had grown interested in open blade shearing with his own work on the family merino stud – “there’s a lot of stud merino rams shorn” and took inspiration from his heritage – “I’ve got photos of my grandfather blade shearing stud rams”.
There was also the close proximity of former national open blade shearing champion, Ken French, of whom he said, “he’s the reason I’m doing it”.
Ken has a farm nearby at Glenisla, and Daniel had nothing but praise and admiration.
“He's represented Australia for a long time,” Daniel said.
“He loves it, he's really talented. He just retired because of age, but he's done as much as he can.
“The New Zealanders that I've met have huge respect for Ken and his shearing ability.
“So I'm pretty lucky to learn from him and have him teach me so much.
“He sort of taught me everything – but me, him, Mal Griffiths (from Horsham) and a few other young boys around this area actually travel most of Victoria in March and into southern New South Wales, and we probably shear 1000 rams together. So that's probably where it started.
“Once I got to know Ken a bit better, he encouraged me to go into the shows – I’ve been doing that for three years.”
Asked what makes a good open blade shearer, he said, although the scoring was the same as machine shearing – with lower numbers the aim across a combination of board score, pen score and time – there were definitely unique challenges.
“You can score very highly out the back (pen) because it's harder to get them as flat as the machine shearers get them ... so quality is probably the most important thing with blade shearing,” Daniel said.
He also said sharp blades were critical.
“Everyone says it's doing up your blades and getting them sharp is probably more than 50 per cent of being able to blade shear,” Daniel said.
“If your blades aren't cutting, you can't really shear them, where if a hand piece isn't cutting, you can still sort of punch it off.
“Ken, he's probably been the master at doing up blades; he tinkers around with them all the time, and he's taught me how to do it. I still can't do it as well as he can, but every set of blades is different, and every shearer can set them up slightly different to suit their shearing.”
He said going over to New Zealand for the World Championships in March would be a challenge, given “they still blade shear a million sheep … up in the high country”, and many of their best shearers were very good.
“Tony Dobbs has been world champion – I'd known him, and it was good to catch up with him,” Daniel said of the Jamestown Championships.
“He had a look at my blades and taught me a few things, and Scott McKay, who's a fair bit younger than Tony, had just finished eight weeks full-time blade shearing in New Zealand, shearing 160 a day – so when you come up against them guys, it's pretty hard to beat them.”
Daniel said the problem for him with open blade shearing was that in Australia, it was only with rams, and “it’s all about quality”, and therefore the speed was less of a factor, and his own physical preparation was now an issue.
“It's never about just smashing them out as fast as you can, but I can shear 50 rams a day comfortably,” he said.
“That's what we've got to do in March to get them all done, because everyone wants them done at the same time. So we sort of hoe in pretty hard for a couple of weeks, and then that's it – there's no real paid blade shearing for the rest of the year.
“But now (that) I'm heading over to New Zealand in March, I'll be doing a little bit of shearing home here, and probably put in a few full days on ewes and crossbreds and things, just to try to work on that pace.”
He said he’s looking forward to the trip, also being invited by Tony and Scott to do a bit of shearing in the lead-up, as well as some sightseeing.
“Mum and dad are pretty keen to come over to New Zealand, and my wife and daughter will definitely be coming for a little holiday,” Daniel said.
But he’s keen to keep his dream in mind, and is realistic about getting past John Dalla.
“Just to get in that top two positions been been the goal and now I suppose the next goal is to go over and represent Australia and do well,” Daniel said.
“I think Johnny is a fantastic blade shearer so our biggest chance will probably be in the teams events, more so than individual.
“For me, it'll be just good experience, especially this first year.
“I would love to get to the next level. Australian champion, obviously, would be the next major goal.”