That quest for new, interesting things to listen to, and a revival of the single as a means of expression in an environment where you mightn't have enough good ideas to work into an album had overseas publications working variations on Record of the Week or Cult Single of the Week.
Such exercises shone a spotlight on a Brisbane outfit calling themselves The Saints. A four-track EP released by a Melbourne quintet in a limited run of 500 copies in early 1977 was the Record Of The Week after a friend posted a copy to NME.
The Sports, as it turned out, were the latest incarnation of some guys who had been working the fringes of the Melbourne music scene without making a huge impact. It was an outfit partly drawn from ex-Pelaco Bothers with a Captain Matchbox alumni on keyboards.
Andrew Pendlebury (ex-Myriad, a countryish R&B outfit) joined Stephen Cummings (vocals) and Ed Bates, (guitar), Jim Niven on keyboards, his old Myriad bandmate Robert Glover (bass) and drummer Paul Hitchins in August that year. Cummings shuffled Bates out around a year later, bringing in ex-Bleeding Heart and High Rise Bomber Martin Armiger on guitar to round out the lineup that delivered the majority of the band's recorded output.
Commercial success came in the form of Who Listens to the Radio? (1978) Don't Throw Stones (1979), Strangers on a Train (1980) and How Come (1981), appearances on Countdown and Night Moves and minor hits in overseas markets.
But they never hit the big time. Cummings' 2009 memoir, Will it Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy? goes part of the way to explaining why one of the best Australian bands of their era failed to cut it on the big stage. Re-releases of their first two albums in late 2014 delivered a powerful reminder of what might have been.