KES Easter Festival

The KES Easter Festival was born in 2002 as a once-off celebration of King Edward VII School's centenary. It proved far too good an idea to happen only once. More than two decades on, the festival is one of South Africa's most prestigious Easter gatherings, staged at the famous Houghton campus in Johannesburg where the Red Army turns out in numbers that strain the grandstands for the closing fixtures.

The guest list reads like a roll call of the republic's great rugby schools. Paarl Boys' High and Bishops make the journey north, Jeppe cross town for the neighbourhood's oldest arguments, and the Eastern Cape boarding schools, Queen's, Dale and Selborne, arrive to play in front of their Gauteng old boys. Hockey runs alongside the rugby throughout, and primary school sides share the weekend, giving the festival the family character that has made it an annual pilgrimage for generations of Old Edwardians.

The hosts have not been afraid to lead either. In recent years KES trimmed the programme to two matches per team, a deliberate stand on player welfare in a congested early season, while the festival's spirit of development has seen first teams coaching girls' and junior sides on the eve of the rugby. A century-old school throwing the best birthday party in Johannesburg, every Easter, still.