Featured Image: Lauren Maccabee

Sports Team frontman Alex Rice has an impish relationship with the internet. In 2021, he went toe-to-toe in a Twitter spat with The 1975’s Matty Healy, mercilessly trolling the singer before coyly posing for photos together months later. Forever the opportunist, Rice plastered the image all over t-shirts promoting Sports Team’s sophomore record Gulp!. Smelling blood again in recent weeks, Rice took futile aim at popstar Charli XCX on Instagram, in hopes of sparking similar discourse. Playing his online tongue-in-cheek hand, the frontman keeps critics guessing, addressing Sports Team’s internet viewership with excessive sarcasm. But when the band announce mere hours before they are due to perform at Manchester Club Academy that the show will be played acapella (owing to their possessions having been lost on an interconnecting flight) eyebrows are duly raised.

Tonight’s gig is the first of Sports Team’s UK tour in celebration of their forthcoming album Boys These Days, scheduled for release in February. The six-piece have been enjoying a brief stint of concerts across the pond, traversing the Atlantic with signature British lairiness. Back on home soil, Sports Team are accompanied by experimental rock trio Mary In The Junkyard. Guitarist Clari Freeman-Taylor tiptoes about the stage, crooning breathily as she recites the wordy bridge of ‘Marble Arch’. The cramped audience wryly observes with bemused reverence, Mary In The Junkyard proving to be a little too liberal for a clientele eager to hear the roar of amps dialled up to 11. 

By hook, crook or cunning misdirection, burdened stage hands are proof enough that Sports Team’s luggage has survived its jaunt from America. Alex Rice struts on stage looking invigorated, if a little jet-lagged, the band racing into the breakneck opening licks of ‘The Game’. There’s a potent smell of stale lager as pints are flung to the heavens, the crowd exuberantly mimicking the sound of Henry Young’s guitar. 

Rice sports a creased collared shirt and slicked back hair, giving him the appearance of a cocksure schoolboy fresh out of detention. There’s no end to gaffs throughout the first half of the set; backing vocalist Rob Knaggs scrambles to remember the words when Rice’s mic momentarily stops working. Sports Team brush aside their misfortunes with knowing glances and cheeky smirks, making their blunders feel endearing as opposed to unprofessional. 

The Cockney sextet execute a variety of greatest hits, most notably ‘Camel Crew’ from 2018 EP Winter Nets. There’s a touch of Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish to Rice’s snarky lyricism, as he bemoans: “The steak is dry and the wine is neat.” Having released their debut album Deep Down Happy in the lockdown of summer 2020, there’s a bittersweet nostalgia tied to lots of this material. 

Keyboardist Ben Mack merrily bashes the ivories throughout ‘M5’, all the while maintaining a deadpan expression and looking almost quizzical to the audience’s explosive excitement. Rob Knaggs assumes lead vocals on ‘Lander’, howling about the costs of Uber and the ethics of fox hunting. Drummer Al Greenwood, dressed in a bioluminescent hi-vis jacket, makes a ferocious effort to keep up with Knaggs’ agitated stream of conscience. 

With the impending release of Boys These Days, they road test several unreleased tracks. It’s an admittedly arduous process; the unheard catalogue is somewhat hit or miss with an audience clamouring for the classics. The drunken crowd are mostly too intoxicated to stand upright, let alone bother themselves with learning the words to a record they’ve yet to hear. 

This being said, bassist Oli Dewdney gets feet tapping and heads nodding to ‘Bang Bang Bang’, a slinky rhythmic earworm from the upcoming third album. Rice soon reengages the room, ordering attendees to sit on the sticky floor for a rendition of ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’. Half the crowd oblige before springing to their feet for the euphoric chorus. ‘Maybe When We’re Thirty’ is a sentimental slice of life with which the band draws the curtain on the main act. 

Returning for a jubilant encore of ‘Here’s The Thing’ and ‘Stanton’, the frontman takes a daredevilish lap of honour, clawing his way through a tempestuous moshpit. “Manchester, this is proper,” he beams before making for the bar. A group once tipped for stadium tours look more at home than ever in dingy student unions; something suggests that Rice and co are more content with Guinness on tap than craft ale at the AO Arena. Sports Team might have missed the boat to mainstream success, but prove time again that they will always stick the landing with their nearest and dearest supporters.