It's about the players, stupid.
This is not Ireland but Gauteng, South Africa.
As a child growing up in Johannesburg we used to have football games at the "field". When we said meet you at the "field" everybody understood.
Our two new football fields in Gopane Village have been completed and were played on by the schools in their first week.
Pedestrian footpaths are evident on virtually all the football fields we see in villages.
South Africa is a dry country. There is one unique feature on most informal soccer fields that I will share with you tomorrow.
This is a typical football field in the villages across South Africa. Our passion is to give the children access to a level field where the ball bounces consistently, they can have fun and build skills to take them to the level of their dreams.
One of our dreamers, Craig, has the vision of converting some old tennis courts next to this beautiful field into artificial seven-a-side fields for the children of the inner-city of Cape Town.
Grass fields can quickly turn into soil fields in Africa. The high temperatures, lack of rain and maintenance can turn a green grass football field into a soil field in a few months.
Obie Oberholzer from Keep it Green is the prime contractor for our first grass DreamField in Richards Bay.
We are waiting for the municipality to provide water and electricity at the site before we can commence construction.
We are hoping for this in the next week!
We have 2 DreamFields at Tshisahulu which is 8 km's from Thohoyando in Limpopo province.
Rain is important for soil stabilised football fields as it is for grass. The good news is that we had rain on our soil fields at Tshisahulu in Limpopo and our new fields under construction in Gopane in the North West.
All our football fields so far have been built on tribal land. Above are the offices of the Gopane Tribal Authority The top photograph is of Chief Janjo Gopane (extreme left), his 2 assistants and Danny from the local organising committee. They have made all of us extremely welcome!
We are "under construction" with our 2 fields in Gopane Village.From the photo you can see the fields in 3 stages. On left is the soil having being riiped by the grader. The soil is then wet to aid in the compaction. To the right is the roller used for stage 1 compaction. On the extreme right the surface is being "shined" to get a level playing surface to be ready for many boots and feet.
In Gopane we have Danny as the head of the committee. Included in the photograph are representatives of the sports clubs, government, municipality, tribal authority, community workers and local business.
This new artificial football field has been constructed at the Universityof Cape Town.
The field is next to Lizwi High School and the community needs a decent field.
BHP Billiton SA (Aluminium) is the kind contributor to this dream.
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