The band pulled the curtain on their latest UK tour at Nottingham Trent University’s sleek and airy venue, Metronome
‘Fishing’ provided ample opportunity for a communal Norwegian row
Why is there a circular pit forming in the middle of the crowd?
Oh, it’s Sports Team.
We should know by now – they’ve been on the scene for eight years: Standing near the front with an open can is never a good idea.
But we never learn.
The band have barely warmed up their muscles with the first few strums of opener ‘The Game’, from 2022’s sophomore album ‘Gulp!’, before the chaos begins. Those nearer the front, who haven’t learned, started dashing for cover as if bullets are about to rain down on them.
The Cambridge sextet have carried a reputation for crazy live shows throughout their eight year career. Still it holds true.
Thursday’s performance at Nottingham Trent University’s 400-capacity Metronome – the band’s last gig of a UK tour in conjunction with DIY Magazine – is all the evidence you might need that their live act continues to rouse just as much as it ever did.
Notably though, the band themselves feels perhaps less chaotic than at a time in history.
Frontman Alex Rice may motion as if he’s conducting the crowd like a Goose Fair showman, but it’s the kids down below that are doing all the work. There’s less of Rice’s signature moves than in the past: Less swinging his arms like a cricketer; less convulsive dancing. But that makes little difference to the baying audience’s fervour.
Hits are rattled through: The Drop (2022), Bang Bang Bang (2025), Here It Comes Again (2019) and the effervescent classic M5 all provide a energetic soundtrack to the human tornados forming in the crowd.
It soon becomes Sports Team bingo; one man is seen scrambling about the floor for his glasses, before finding them and realising they’re cracked; on stage, bassist Oli Dewdney breaks a string (the first time it’s ever happened – not an easy feat).
Rice takes the opportunity at this point to recount a tale of a familiar face in the crowd being “taken out” – in the most violent sense of the term – by a bouncer at a previous gig in Liverpool.
There’s even a communal Norwegian row during the breakdown of Fishing, which, even after being a band for some 10 years, proves there are still surprises that can put a smile on the faces of the performers – apart from keyboardist Ben Mack of course, who still somehow maintains his unflappable-mannequin stage persona a decade on.
“I told him you guys would look after him,” says Rice after a possibly fictional story about his colleague’s recent break-up. It’s funny. But there’s no smile from Mack. Not even a flicker. He doesn’t flinch.
The setlist naturally begins to veer toward more of the classics as it enters the second half, with new single Billy (‘Radio 6 gold at the moment’, quips Rice) shoehorned in between favourites Camel Crew and Here’s The Thing to break up the nostalgia.
By closers Kutcher and Stanton – some of the band’s earliest work – Rice has promised that the troupe’s new guitarist, standing in for Henry Young, (paternity duties) will crowdsurf during the final song.
But the guitarist in question is shaking his head furiously, a worried smile failing to mask his fear.
“If he doesn’t, you might have to come and get him,” says Rice.
By the end of the penultimate tune, the band are all grinning in the knowledge of what’s coming.
The guitarist, on the other hand, keeps his head firmly down, staring at his guitar while holding notes for longer than they need to be and pretending not to remember his challenge. It feels like a futile attempt to put off the inevitable.
But the crowd takes pity on him and he escapes his fate. It’s left to Rice to show him how it’s done, the frontman breezily collapsing onto a horde of hands and being carried messianically before the pair walk off stage.
I’ve hardly moved here at the back, yet I am sufficiently soaked.
Sports Team: Perhaps the only band that can make you sweat while you’re standing still.
