We were invited by the Ospreys to support them in their high profile game against the Scarlets. You can imagine the levels of excitement in our group, especially as one of us happens to be very avid Ospreys fan!! We were to play a gig before the start at the entrance to the stadium, and then during the match, get the fans clapping and singing, get the motivation going.
We met with Nick, the Osprey’s operations assistant, to understand what was needed of us, and set to practicing and planning. On Saturday we set up outside and played our set to people on their way into the stadium:
We then took our drums inside helped by several stewards and under the excellent guidance of Nick, we repeatedly played one of three simple and powerful rhythms whenever it was an Ospreys attack – we had about thirty bursts of 20 seconds of drumming.
One of the rhythms was a back beat to the ‘Call of the Ospreys’.
From where we were it was hard to gather if people actually heard us – as sound travels quite slowly and did the crowd cheer with the drums or just because something was going on in the pitch?…However, our ‘Master of the media’, Thomas, extracted a clip from the broadcast of the game. Put your headphones on and you can hear how loud the seven of us actually were!