Can the St John’s club manage to reclaim a century-old cricket ground lost to football? Fingers crossed
I knew what it was as soon as I saw it. Strolling up Rennie’s River from Quidi Vidi lake, home of North America’s longest-running sporting event, the St John’s Regatta, I reached the Riverdale Tennis Club. There, to my right, was a large, flat, mown field, a gravelled boundary curving round its periphery, and a small pavilion painted duck-egg blue. It could be only one thing.
The gates were locked, the signs warning “Feildian Grounds – Private Property”, but I snuck in through a hole in the fence and had a poke around. White lines were daubed onto the grass, and goalposts erected at either end, but this wasn’t really a football pitch. It was too square, with yards of spare field either side of the playing area. At the same time, it wasn’t square enough: each corner of the field was rounded, indicating equidistance from a central point, rather than the rectangular junctions of goal- and touchline. The layout was unmistakable, the conclusion remarkable. The footballers were interlopers. This was a cricket ground.
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