Sports Team + Alfie Templeman

After gaining buzzing popularity back in 2018, Sports Team have been labelled as ‘the ones to watch’ on the indie scene, captivating fans with their quirkiness and their cheeky charm. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that they were able to sell out venues across the country, including the Norwich Arts Centre, on their winter tour.

Alfie Templeman – with all his soft boy charm – opened the show in a warm bubble of yellow light. At the age of 16, Alfie Templeman was able to impress the swarming crowd with wholesome and upbeat songs such as ‘Yellow Flowers’. Although a band such as Gladboy may have been a better suited and more energetic support band for Sports Team, Alfie Templeman provided the calm before the storm and left the crowd in good spirits.

The crowd began to get restless as the pulsing beats of Let Me Entertain You rattled through the Norwich Arts Centre. The audience whooped and pushed forward as Sports Team jumped onto the stage showing just how eager everybody was to see them. The band opened with the lively bop, Margate which had ‘summer song’ written all over it and had people dancing from the first strum of the guitar. The frontman, Alex Rice, interacted with the crowd, urging them to create bigger and crazier mosh pits, relishing in the bath of excitement and energy the band were creating. The set continued with sweat, speed and surprisingly no emotion from the keyboard player, who seemed to capture the attention of many crowd-members that surrounded me. Fans were struggling to stand still throughout the performance, stomping to Sports Team’s infectiously danceable guitar riffs. Mosh pits continued to circle in front of me, tempting and dragging in as many people as they could during well-known tracks such as M5 and Fishing. All the while, Alex Rice continued to catapult himself across the stage, climb up metal frames, dance frantically like a possessed being and crowd surf across an audience who appeared to worship him.

One sweaty fan commented ‘I got surprisingly involved’ which sums up this gig perfectly. Although Sports Team are nothing necessarily new, their performance was energetic and fun and their tracks are quite frankly infectious to dance to. Sports Team know how to put on a good show and that’s exactly what they did in Norwich.