Live Review + Gallery | Sports Team @ Academy 2, Manchester

Sports Team

Academy 2, Manchester

5th November 2025

Photography by Kyle Roczniak

Sam Rodgers

Manchester-based freelance journalist and film producer/scriptwriter. Co-founder of Pop Valley Press.

Sports Team return to Manchester to celebrate their new album ‘Boys These Days,’ reconfirming their place as one of the best live bands around

After financial constraints unfortunately forced them to cancel several dates of their European tour, Sports Team – a band built on and for the live circuit – returned to Manchester Academy to prove that they’re still one of the country’s most captivating live acts.

Their latest album, ‘Boys These Days,‘ marks a confident return to the spirit of their Mercury Prize-nominated debut, ‘Deep Down Happy,‘ following the inconsistency of its successor, ‘Gulp!‘. The record embraces the band’s wacky, childish side while refining their chaotic trademark sound into something sharper and more sophisticated.

As the mixed-age crowd fills the venue and the lights go down, the band arrives on stage against a backdrop of gaudy upholstery emblazoned with their name. High-energy opener ‘The Game’ instantly showcases the band’s trademark wit and irony. Their jabs at “little Englander” attitudes complement the track’s thunderous riffs. As pints fly through the air and the anthemic chorus echoes around Academy 2, it’s clear Sports Team are already onto a winner.

The song leads straight into the mock-spaghetti-Western intro of ‘Bang Bang Bang’. Written shortly before the band was robbed at gunpoint in San Francisco last year, the ironically jubilant skiffle-rock hit takes aim at America’s casual gun laws. Its frantic pace and soaring chorus quickly turn the room into a raucous singalong.

Frontman Alex Rice, tambourine in hand, praises the crowd for their “good start” before parting them for a wall-of-death and diving into ‘Boys These Days‘ opener ‘I’m in Love (Subaru)’. A glitzy, confessional comment on consumerism filled with sultry guitars and lyrics pondering life on the road, the live rendition swaps the ‘60s sax for keys.

“We need some strong lads for this, get the weedy weedy kids on top,” Rice jokes, enticing the crowd into a human pyramid – something banned at their recent show in Glasgow. As the three-storey pyramid topples, the band thrash into the aggressively charged ‘Camel Crew’. Full of biting lyrics that take aim at sell-outs and the ‘bourgeois’, the track’s venomous tone thrives in a live setting and erupts into the night’s fiercest mosh pit.

‘Kutcher’ brings an element of theatrical danger as Rice clambers onto the speakers, before ‘Medium Machine’ steadies the tempo. Trading their steamroller indie sound for a more mellow, slacker-rock style, their latest release brims with swirling, distorted guitars and wistful lyrics. An attempt to emulate what Pavement might sound like if they wanted to be Men At Work, the single succeeds in momentarily taming the rowdy crowd.

Impromptu half-covers of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Call Me Maybe’ – reminders of Sports Team’s unpredictable and unserious nature – lead neatly into early single ‘M5’. The track epitomises the band’s sardonic songwriting and the mundanity of British life. A fine piece of audacious pop, ‘M5’ bursts with punchy basslines and peppy drum work that sends the unrelenting crowd into another frenzy.

The three-song encore peaks with another fan favourite, ‘Here’s the Thing’, which fuses Blur’s Brit-wit with The Libertines’ anarchic vigour. While its irony-laden lyrics teeter on heavy-handed – “if you work a little harder you’ll get by” – the crowd doesn’t seem to care as they thrash around with joyous abandon.

After crowd-surfing back to the stage, Rice stands with his back to the audience in a quasi-Christ-like pose before leading the band off for the final time. At times boilerplate indie, at others irritatingly smug, Sports Team remain a lot of fun – and deserving of their acclaimed live reputation. With a well-crafted setlist that seamlessly blends old and new material, their appearance at Academy 2 was a memorable one full of playful arrogance, guitar-driven chaos, and rousing choruses.