Graham Spiers is one of the most interesting and modest figures ever to grace the Scottish football circuit. His innate humility is completely at odds with someone who has spent over three decades in the spotlight as one of the prominent members of the football press pack. Interestingly however, the distinguished career in print and on screen almost never was. In the late 1980’s, fresh from graduating from the esteemed St Andrews University with a degree in theology, career wise, Graham had a decision to make between his two great loves – faith and football. Although he would never frame it this way himself, serendipitously for Scottish Football, on this occasion, God missed out.
In the early to mid 1990’s, Graham’s star was on the rise, initially with Scotland on Sunday. When punters read his match reports, they found the events being described to them resonated with what they themselves had witnessed with their own eyes the day before. Fast forward to the Millennium, and the consumption of Graham’s eloquent and articulate writing had become part of the staple diet of the thinking football fan in Scotland. His writing provoked thought and his words carried weight. He was born for the broadsheet and before long, he had a job and a title to match as Chief Sportswriter for The Herald.
Along the way, friends and enemies were made in the most unlikely of places. Jim McLean, the infamously stern and tyrannical potentate of the Tannadice corner shop empire, took an unanticipated and possibly unlikely shine to Graham. McLean was aware of Graham’s puritanical Christian upbringing and background, it chimed with his own formative years as a product of a working class, Plymouth Brethren family. As a result of this reverence and respect, McLean’s notorious fierce guard was sometimes loosened in a manner never before seen by a reporter. How else can the image of Wee Jim effectively participating in a catwalk on a bleak and breezy Broughty Ferry beach be explained?
Spiers’ doughty, digging set him on a tumultuous collision course with the club he grew up supporting, Rangers FC. In what we would now term ‘the mainstream media’, Graham was often a solitary, ridiculed voice who took the Ibrox club to task over the significant issues of religious bigotry and financial mismanagement. Although this path would force him to set aside his love for the club and sacrifice his relationship with them, he would be vindicated on both counts.
The conflict between Graham and Rangers would never cease. Many years later, he was summoned to Ibrox for a meeting between himself, then Rangers Managing Director Stuart Robertson and current Rangers Chairman John Gilligan to discuss a ban the club had recently handed out to him. During this meeting, Gilligan openly declared how much he enjoyed the chant ‘The Billy Boys’ and that he couldn’t see an issue with it. As Graham sat open mouthed, Stuart Robertson shifted uncomfortably in his chair, unsure of which way to look. When the details of this gathering were relayed to the readers of The Herald, a volcano erupted in Govan.
Immediately a campaign of intense pressure ensued. The Herald lost their nerve and Graham lost his job.
Online magazine Bella Caledonia commented at the time it was “nothing less than disgraceful intimidation by Rangers FC aimed at silencing critical voices. It has no place in a Scottish democracy and should be condemned by all regardless of affiliation or club support.“
For telling the truth, Graham remains banned from Ibrox to this day.
There have been vast changes in the way we consume news over the past thirty years. Undeniably, the digital age has advanced life immeasurably, but along with it has come the enforcement of certain narratives and the discouragement of genuine debate. Modern day sports media is not untouched by this phenomena, with much of football discussion now reduced to the crunching of numbers and paralysis by analysis. Alternative viewpoints and independent thinking have been replaced by uniform anodyne statements. A blanket of blandness has been thrown across the industry. Variety and strong opinions are in short supply, there’s an air of pomposity and disingenuousness to the entire charade. To be succinct about it, the big beasts of sports reporting have been driven to extinction.
If Graham Spiers is guilty of one thing when reflecting on his own career in the sports media, it’s understating both his contribution and talents as well as downplaying his influence. In all the years I have read, listened or even now conversed with him, I’ve lost count of the amount of times he has described himself as ‘lucky’ or even said he ‘wasn’t very good’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never once has he shirked or shied away from thorny and contentious issues, forever putting his head above the parapet and into the eye of the storm when the smoother option was sycophancy and a quieter, calmer life. Quite simply, he has been and remains, a footballing and literary erudite who for over three decades, has educated, entertained and enraged his readership. If that’s not the role of a writer, then what is?
Calum Maltman
Photograph – Stuart Wallace – Sunday Times
