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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.

 

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