Sports Team Live At Stylus: Never Playing To The Whistle

“I think a gig stopper would be pretty inconsequential for us, because if the music isn’t happening… it doesn’t really matter” says Sports Team lead singer Alex Rice, leisurely sitting on-stage as he cheekily incites a raging bull of a crowd to do whatever they fancy. Crowd surf? Of course. Get on stage and propose? Please. Form a human pyramid in the pit? We’ll show you how! Many would deem a disregard of one’s craft in favour of such rabid theatrics to be career suicide, but for Sports Team it’s the entire point. Their boisterous songs, whilst catchy to a fault, are designed to play second fiddle to something greater, an escape for the people. You think you’ve seen it all? Not unless you’ve been to a Sports Team gig. 

November rain has well and truly started, nights are drawing in: the good people of Leeds needed an energizer, and for a couple hundred of them it surely arrived in the form of giddy guitar six-piece Sports Team. Emerging onto the Stylus stage, the 2020 Mercury Prize nominees opened with ‘The Game’, a teaser for the fun that was only just getting started. Firing on all cylinders, the team quickly rattled off new fan-favourite ‘Bang Bang Bang’ and 2022 classic ‘The Drop’- a mean statement of their deep bag of tricks. 

‘I’m in Love (Subaru)’ and ‘Sensible’ arrived around the set’s midpoint as markers of the band’s latest musings. Taken from their not-long-released third album Boys These Days (2025), both tracks are charming voyages into diverging sub-genres under the Sports Team umbrella. The former is laced with the velvet smoothness of a yacht-rock classic, whilst the latter is a vibrant indie ditty fitted with a ticklish keyboard line and that classic Sports Team charm. 

Clad in a denim suit of armour, lead singer Rice was untouchable. His undeniable stage presence was not one crafted from stoic fortitude but instead of a vivacious energy, much more akin to that of jittery, all-too-excitable dog chasing cars than a stone-faced knight. His voice, whilst hearty and firm, lay messy on the careening tunes that the remaining five-members etched, creating their wily sound. The resulting noise was controlled chaos that nourished a starving crowd. 

This self-described blend of “10% music, 90% crowd manipulation” was 110% insanity. The raucous liberties Sports Team take in their performances aren’t a distraction from musical ineptitude, but the luminous energy-drink in their jaegerbomb of a set; sharp, invigorating and somewhat questionable for your health. The evening’s festivities included the classic elbow-flailing mosh-pit, lead-guitarist Henry Young’s primordial crowd surf and determined attempts at the famed human pyramid. The latter is of course a security guards’ worst nightmare. Ironically, its inception came from a list of monstrosities that the band had to swear against allowing at one of their early gigs. The very fear of the beast led to its birth- poetic, no? Sports Team: one, security teams nationwide: nil.

The Cambridge originating six-piece momentarily embraced the gentler edges of their art as they approached the night’s close. ‘Medium Machine’ garnered a promising reaction despite its recent release and steadier pace, whilst ‘Maybe When We’re Thirty’ saw the rambunctious crowd collect themselves to truly bask in its tender presence. The tongue-in-cheek tale of an apathetic and stereotypically British existence resonated with the proudly Northern crowd, holding a strange beauty in the air for a few fleeting moments. 

Mere moments after the classic encore trope, red lights flickered and lit a fire in the belly of the raging bull crowd once more for their returning idols. Horns sharpened and hearts ablaze, the crowd rattled around their cage for jubilant anthem ‘Here’s the thing’ and bucked up one final time for clambering and crashing closer ‘Stanton’. 

Poetically ending on their first song ever released, Sports Team saw off an evening of vigorous passion and raucous antics, encapsulated by its passionate feeling much more so than just being another band’s set. Of course, the songs are inventive and fresh as always, but Sports Team’s ability to truly entrap an audience in their weird and wild world for a few hours will always be their true gift. The people of Leeds got their energizer from a Sports Team performance that was nothing shy of emphatic.

Words By Daniel Brown