Sports
The city has a wealth of fine sporting facilities, catering for cricket, rugby union, association football, field hockey and many other sports. Its coastal location also makes it a base for many watersports.
Port Elizabeth is the location of the St George's Park cricket ground, which holds test cricket matches. St George's Park is also the oldest cricket ground in South Africa, and was the venue for the first Test match played outside of Australia or England, between South Africa and England on the 12 and 13 March 1889. The Warriors, a top Cricket Team in South Africa, is based in Port Elizabeth.
The headquarters of the controversial Southern Spears rugby franchise was in Port Elizabeth. The long-standing Eastern Province Rugby Union, now commonly known as the Eastern Province Kings, would form the basis of the Spears franchise together with East London's Border Bulldogs. The remnants of the Spears were later reconstituted into the Southern Kings, also based in Port Elizabeth, which will join Super Rugby in 2013. The union, although still headquartered at EPRU Stadium, now play their home matches at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
In December 2011, Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium became the new home of the South Africa Sevens, the country's leg of the annual IRB Sevens World Series in rugby sevens. The event had previously been held in three other cities, most recently in George in the Western Cape from 2002 to 2010,
The city's main football club is Bay Stars F.C. They currently use the Gelvandale Stadium and play in the Telkom League.
The Algoa Bay Yacht Club operated out of Port Elizabeth harbour.
Read more about this topic: Port Elizabeth
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“It was so hard to pry this door open, and if I mess up I know the people behind me are going to have it that much harder. Because then there’s living proof. They can sit around and say, “See? It doesn’t work.” I don’t want to be their living proof.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)