A regional daily has been landed with what is believed to be the first blanket ban on coverage of its local football club in its 121-year history.

Southampton Football Club has banned the Southern Daily Echo from attending matches, covering events involving its players and even attending functions as guests in its hospitality lounges.

The club – known as the Saints – even stopped the paper photographing players handing out Christmas presents to sick children at a local hospital.

The fallout follows a row over a supposedly “embargoed” story about the club’s plans to redevelop its training ground which had already appeared elsewhere as well as on the local council’s website.

The club had attempted to impose a blackout on news of the proposed development in the New Forest until it could stage its own press conference, despite the fact details were already being reported in other media.

Editor Ian Murray said: “We tried to explain to the club’s new Swiss management that as the story was in the public domain and already being reported we could not adhere to any embargo they wanted to impose after we approached them.

“The next thing we knew they had banned us from covering matches. They said they wanted a meeting to iron out the differences, which we were willing to agree to, but then imposed the ban anyway.”

Ian said that, at that stage, he would have been happy not to have reported the ban in the hope of arranging a meeting with the club’s executive chairman, Swiss banker Nichola Cortese, in a bid to resolve the row.

However he said that, following the incident in which the club prevented the paper running photographs of sick children receiving Christmas presents from players, he decided it was time the gloves came off.

As a result, Friday’s edition of the paper carried a story revealing the ban.

Said Ian: “It was obvious this was something we couldn’t keep from fans and readers and we had to go into print to explain why the paper was banned.

“However we have assured everyone that coverage of the team will continue as normal and I doubt if anyone will notice the difference.”

The Daily Echo was founded in 1888, three years after the creation of Southampton FC. The paper covered the club’s news in its first editions and has continued to do so ever since.

It is not the only daily paper on the South Coast to have run into trouble with its local football club over recent months.

Last month we reported how Portsmouth FC had banned Neil Allen, chief sports reporter and Pompey writer with The News, after objecting to a match report on the club’s 0-0 draw away at Hull City.

The latest expulsion came three months after peace had apparently broken out between the paper and the club following a five-month ban on all News staff because of a story regarding alleged damage to the FA Cup which Portsmouth won last year.

Comments

Golam Murtaza (14/12/2009 09:34:41)
Some of these arrogant football clubs need to be taken down a few pegs.

Andrew Griffiths (14/12/2009 09:41:34)
Newspapers should and I am sure will, continue to demonstrate to football clubs, that however much they milk their fan base financially, ultimately it is the local community that they rely on and that they cannot throw their weight around in this way.

Unhappysnapper (14/12/2009 10:01:37)
Don’t get mad, get even. The Echo should just wash their hands of Southampton FC and not run any stories or any pictures of anyone or anything to do with the club. Then and only then will the club realise that they need the local press more than the local press needs them. They’ll soon come crawling back when they want to advertise matches and events over Christmas and into the secon-half of the season.

Bill Stike (14/12/2009 10:10:58)
If you totally ignore the local professional football club you lose a huge amount of remaining readers – as nice as it would be to do jus that

Metman (14/12/2009 12:30:45)
Its a harsh reality but without the local club what is the paper going to fill its back pages with?
Bowling club news or yacht club updates written by well meaning, but ultimately not very good enthusiasts.
The paper should just swallow it and try and make amends or else those readers who pick up the paper will just gravitate to fan sites or the club’s own websites.

Subbed Out (14/12/2009 14:38:50)
Well done to Ian ‘Twitcher’ Murray for standing up to the club.

OLDhack (15/12/2009 12:37:19)
This is why we have sports agencies to pick up the slack and provide the newspaper with coverage.
The newspaper owners are fools!

John (15/12/2009 16:41:50)
How many times do you see this happening? In the end it helps nobody. The club will suffer not having the coverage and ultimately the paper will suffer more so. If the story already appeared on the council website it was obviously already public. S’oton are a joke club anyway.

Johnny H (19/01/2010 15:59:25)
What a farce? Saints obviously don’t realise the amount of support they get from their relevant local newspaper. Certainly more than they get in national newspapers now that they are languishing in League One.
And why are they in League One? Because in recent years they have become sucha badly run football club.
Banning the Southern DAily Echo is just the latest example of this.