Skip to main content

Meadows at Michaelhouse - a place of beauty




My friend and colleague Jonathan Cook posted on Facebook today this picture of the main rugby field at Michaelhouse – Meadows.

It’s great setting, and it prompted me to include it on the list of the most beautiful school grounds I have visited in my, yet to be (and probably never will be), book on my 40-odd years of watching school sport.

 Here’s what I wrote after watching cricket there:

When I went to the Khaya Majola Week at Michaelhouse in 2018 it was the first time I had been to the school. It’s a magnificent place – red brick buildings dotted around a forested parkland and immaculate sportsfields all over the place.

The cricket week was head quartered in the Red and White – the clubhouse at the main cricket field and it’s a beautiful setting. The best of the fields, I thought, however was Meadows, the main rugby field, where there were also Khaya Majola Week matches played that week. 

Without it’s posts and markings, it was difficult to see exactly where the rugby fields lay in that extensive meadow. The edge of the vast lawn merged into the forest on the one end. On the day I was watching cricket there a Midlands misty drizzle descended, driving the players off the field. It was magical, one of the most beautiful of all the many beautiful places that my sports reporting travels have taken me to.

The 10 prettiest ground I’ve been to, in no particular order, are:

1 Camp’s Bay High rugby field; 2 Burger Field St John’s College; 3 Bridge House, Franschoek; 4 Pollock Oval, Grey High School; 5 De Villiers Oval, SACS; 6 Meadows; 7 King Edward VII Aquatic Centre; 8 Wayne Joubert, St Stithians; 9 Brug Street, Paarl Boys’ High, 10 TC Mitchell Oval, St Alban’s College.

I also compiled a list of the 10 ugliest grounds I’ve been to, but I’ll let that sleeping dog lie, for now.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Queen's unexpected win was the highlight of a great school rugby week

  My sporting highlight of the week? …. It’s been rugby all the way and I got excited for various reasons, on Thursday already, about the Muir College vs Parktown game at Grey High, knowing that it was likely to be eclipsed as the long weekend unfolded. Then, on Friday night the Lions beat the Pumas in the Currie Cup. It’s always a highlight for me when they win these days, and that they stopped the defending champions made it more special. But the real stars this week were aways going to be the schoolboys and weren’t there some cracking games? Hilton holding out against nearly 10 minutes of ferocious attack from Michaelhouse to win 20-17 and extend their unbeaten run in the Midlands derby; and Jeppe scoring two tries in the final minute to snatch a draw against Selborne when the game looked gone for them, were two of them. At the Wildekalwer Festival in Kimberley where the big guns were playing, things went pretty much as expected, with no upsets. The Grey College vs Garsfon...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's rugby trials time, and I don't miss the cold

  My school sporting highlight of the week? It’s more a time of year, rather than an event, and I love it because of the memories it stirs: provincial rugby selection season. When the first chills of winter begin to bite, as they have this week, you know the Craven Week trials are on. I spent 10 years on those selection panels and the one consistent memory of those times is that it was bloody cold. On a typical U18 trials day the final game will kick off at around 5.30pm – sunset – and you’d have been on the side of the field in places like Alberton, or Krugersdorp, or, worst of all at UJ, deep in the valley and next to the Westdene Dam, all afternoon, steadily cooling down. We’d whinge, but I used to look forward to it all year, and from year to year.   It wasn’t easy. Trials are definitely not the best way to pick a team and, as the years passed, the task was made more difficult because racial quotas had to be met – it’s much worse now. And you’ll never please everyone...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meeting old friends has been the highlight of the weekend

  My school sports highlight of the weekend? …. The rugby festivals, obviously.   Everything about them, really, but in particular, for me, seeing some familiar faces, men and women who have spent much of their lives in service of sport at schools. There are too many to list them all, but I know there will be no offence taken if I’ve left someone out. I spoke of the guys in the KES Festival office the other day, Derron van Eeden, Neil Darroch and Ian Sim – people with weighty jobs over the festival weekend – but always gracious and courteous in all their dealings with everyone. And while I was at KES I saw Tinus Diedericks, the Golden Lions Schools Rugby chairman, Brad Ireland and Ian Rickelton, long-termers at St David’s, Hans Coetzee – a rugby coaching legend in these parts, and from the school cricket world, Niels Momberg, who is commentating on SuperSport Schools. Down the road at St John’s, I had a word with Arnold Geerdts, who has been the announcer there for the last 15...
Post a Comment
Read more