Sports Team Class of
r 2019
Injecting guitar music in 2018 with a bravado often left in the ‘90s and possessing an arsenal of indie hits threatening to become classics, this six-piece want to inspire devotion and community. Words: Will Richards. Photos: Phil Smithies.
stands atop a speaker stack, hands on hips, a flamboyant overseer of the chaos below. Songs like ‘Kutcher’ and ‘Winter Nets’ are received like anthems-in-waiting, bellowed back at the band from the depths of a sweaty, fevered moshpit. Balloons rain down for a triumphant closing of ‘Stanton’. They walk on stage to Robbie's ‘Let Me Entertain You’, for heaven’s sake. It’s absurd, commendable and very exciting.
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omewhere down the line, for one reason or another, guitar music lost its bravado. The well-thumbed story of the six-string being dead may be a load of old tosh, yet if you had to name the genre’s biggest characters, spewing headline-worthy quotes in their sleep and becoming memes without even trying, they’d probably still look distinctly Gallagher-shaped (with Alex Turner the millennial addition). Still, it’s been a while since such a character barked their way to the front of the fresh pack with the swagger of Alex Rice, and it’s been almost as long since there’s been a band with quite as much bolshiness and theatricality as Sports Team. Take the group’s recent show at London’s Scala. A lofty booking and a risk (by their own admission), the months in the run-up to the show saw tweet after tweet from the band mocking their own confidence, talking of venue capacity and “gentlemen’s sell-outs” on a daily basis. Come the evening itself it’s an actual sell-out - a proper, pinned-againstthe-wall-at-the-back one at that. Alex
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The band have now announced a significantly larger show in the capital - the Electric Ballroom in March. As testament to their swelling popularity, it doesn’t even feel like too much of a risk this time. Of course, that doesn’t sit well with Alex, so a few
“It feels like an identity thing, coming to see Sports Team, which I don’t think a lot of bands have.” Alex Rice months back he legitimately looked into booking Wembley Arena for 2021. Sadly, they don’t take bookings three years in advance, he tells us, completely straight-faced. Whether you choose to believe him or not, there’s a world-conquering attitude
to Sports Team. Draped in sarcasm it might be, but just look at where bands with the limitless enthusiasm and ambition of this six have gone before.
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ormed while studying at Cambridge University, the six-piece - completed by guitarist and songwriter Rob Knaggs, guitarist Henry Young, drummer Al Greenwood, bassist Oli Dewdney and keyboardist/professional staring contestant/the band’s very own Bez, Ben Mac - started Sports Team, in Rob’s words, “'cause we wanted to be in a band and we all love it. We could go and play at Veg Bar in Brixton back in the day, to like five people, and come out feeling like we’d done Knebworth.” “The best way you can hang out with your mates is to form a band, believe me,” Alex confirms. “It’s the best way to be a group, being a gang. What do you get to do? Go around Europe together in a van and shout at people every night? Brilliant.” Though obviously they now find themselves metaphorical miles away from the Veg Bar days, there’s an unwavering passion and commitment evident with Sports Team, something not tied to venue capacities or traditional ideas of success. Six best friends who also live together, they’ve become a gang in the truest sense. “We’d known each other a long time before the band,” Rob says, “Every time we meet a producer, they’ll say ‘You guys are reeeally horrible to each other. It’s funny, but like, it’s genuinely cruel’. We’ve got to the point where we can say literally anything to each other, which is good, because you see bands who’ve got
