The Cambridge graduates have found success with prosaic songs about phones, pubs and motorways, but that doesn’t stop them being rude about their rivals
Given the general absence of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, bands tend to run away from middle England. But for Rob Knaggs, the songwriter with Sports Team, it’s where the action is. “I really like roundabouts,
Britain in Bloom competitions, local parish newsletters,” he says. “High streets are covered in people’s symbols of belonging – like an Emma Bridgewater tin.”
His six-piece band are making something improbably big out of this minutiae. Formed in 2016 while they were studying at Cambridge, in the past two years their exuberant indie-pop has taken them from tiny pub stages to a major label deal and, the day I meet them, filling the 2,300-capacity Forum in Kentish Town, north London. Their debut album comes out this spring.