Graham Spiers is a Scottish

sports journalist Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The number of participants in a par ...

who writes for the Scottish edition of ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' newspaper. He has won Scotland's Sports Journalist of the Year award four times. Spiers grew up in Edinburgh, Fife and Glasgow, and attended the

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

. He worked as chief sportswriter at '' The Herald'' from 2001 to 2007. He then moved to The Times where has worked off and on since 2007. He was a regular pundit on the

Scottish television Scottish Television (now legally known as STV Central Limited) is the ITV (TV network), ITV network franchisee for Central Belt, Central Scotland. The channel — the largest of the three ITV franchises in Scotland — has been in operation si ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

highlights show ''

Scotsport ''Scotsport'' is a Scotland, Scottish sports television programme, broadcast on STV (TV channel), STV in northern and central Scotland between 1957 and 2008, as well as on ITV Border in southern Scotland. It was first broadcast in 1957 as ''S ...

'', shown on STV, before the show ended in May 2008. He also appeared frequently on

Clyde 1 Clyde 1 is an Independent Local Radio station based in Glasgow, Scotland, owned and operated by Bauer Media Audio UK as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Glasgow and West Central Scotland. As of September 2024, the station ...

's football show ''Super ScoreBoard'', and

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' ''Press Box''. From around 2011 onwards Spiers has appeared in various formats on

BBC Radio Scotland BBC Radio Scotland is a Scottish national radio network owned and operated by BBC Scotland, a division of the BBC. It broadcasts a wide variety of programmes. It replaced the Scottish BBC Radio 4 opt-out service of the same name from 23 N ...

. He was brought up as a

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fan, but has been a prominent critic of Rangers' leadership and supporters, highlighting many incidents of racism and

sectarianism Sectarianism is a debated concept. Some scholars and journalists define it as pre-existing fixed communal categories in society, and use it to explain political, cultural, or Religious violence, religious conflicts between groups. Others conceiv ...

.Brian Viner: Brave prophet spreads the word against Rangers' bile
The Independent, 4 August 2007 :::''I have always happily ignored one of the traditional and cowardly rules of Scottish sports journalism – the rule which says, always apportion equal blame to Celtic and Rangers when talking of bigotry – by pointing a much bigger finger of blame at Rangers, the club I grew up supporting.'' In 2007,

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published his book, ''L'Enigma – A Chronicle of Trauma and Turmoil at Rangers'' () on Paul Le Guen's short tenure as the manager of

. In the same year he also contributed a chapter to the book ''It's Rangers for me?'' In September 2008, Spiers wrote "For years now

Celtic Park Celtic Park is a Soccer-specific stadium, football stadium and the home of Scottish Premiership team Celtic F.C., Celtic, in the Parkhead area of Glasgow, Scotland. With a capacity of 60,832, it is the largest List of football stadiums in Sco ...

– unlike Ibrox – has been largely free of sectarian or racist chanting." In the aftermath of the 2008 UEFA Cup final riots, Spiers called Rangers "a club with poison at its core." In June 2013 Spiers expressed his own view that the Rangers which reformed in the lower divisions after the original company's 2012 liquidation was a new club rather than a direct continuation of the liquidated entity. In January 2016, Spiers, by now a freelance writer, was involved in a dispute with Rangers regarding alleged comments made to him by a Rangers director. The club were demanding an apology from ''The Herald'', for whom Spiers wrote a column, while the writer himself maintained that what he had written was accurate. Although ''The Herald'' published an apology for the column, Spiers in turn issued his own statement, defending himself and saying he would not be contributing any more columns to the paper. He joined ''The Times'' a month later, though that move had already been agreed before the ''Herald'' row. Columnist Angela Haggerty of ''The Heralds sister paper, ''The Sunday Herald'', was also sacked after she supported Spiers on

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. In recent years, Spiers has conducted theatre interviews at the

Edinburgh Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as the Edinburgh Fringe, the Fringe or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2024 spanned 25 days, sold more than 2.6 million tickets and featur ...

, involving figures from the world of politics, theatre, the arts and sport.Spiers, Graham
"In Conversation With... Mhairi Black"
Edinburgh festival Fringe, 4 August 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Spiers, Graham Living people Scottish sportswriters Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) People from Anstruther People from Bearsden The Herald (Glasgow) people Scottish sports journalists The Times journalists Alumni of the University of St Andrews Scottish television personalities Scottish radio personalities