Fields of Play is a twelve minute documentary that provides a brief history of the fascinating world of inner-city Cape Town soccer from the late 19th Century through to the mid-and-late-20th Century.

The film explores the lives of the players and how Green Point Common was an integral space in the lives of these sportsmen and their supporters. This brief history of an unmistakeable Cape Town landmark is told with newspaper archive, old maps, photographs of the various clubs and the players, and interviews with people who were intimately involved in soccer and connected to the Common through soccer over this period.

Fields of Play conjures up the community spirit and camaraderie that existed around teams and around the sport. Clubs were formed where people lived along streets – and more often than not family ties ran through the clubs. Where there were no pre-existing family ties, the teams became like families. Inner-city clubs that played at the Common were not only from Green Point and the neighbouring Bo Kaap, but also from Sea Point, District Six and German Town. Clubs from both the northern and southern suburbs of Cape Town also played matches at the Common.

With the enforcement of the Group Areas Act club membership dwindled, allegiances changed and Green Point Common became exclusively white. Some clubs successfully retained their membership after the forced removals and their relocation, but this was not always the case.

Some of the discriminatory politics is retold with humourous recollections from various characters. The pencil test, for example, is remembered by everyone as a means of assessing how close your genes were to being ‘white’ or how close they were to being ‘black’ and so whether you were allowed to join a team, or whether you were excluded.

Fields of Play was commissioned by the District Six Museum as part of their Fields of Play exhibition that opened in October 2008. To read more about this exhibition visit the Fields of Play web page at the District Six Museum.