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.

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