The editor of an award-winning weekly newspaper has told of his dilemma over running a story about a local footballer’s gambling addiction – while the player was still incommunicado at a specialist clinic.

Gary Lawrence, of the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald, knew the story would get out and wanted to make sure his paper was first with the news.

But there was no chance to get the player’s side of the story before publication.

The paper had previously reported that Chippenham Town player Mark Badham was missing from the side “through illness”.

He said: “We had a bit of a dilemma over whether or not to run the story.

“We had heard about it late last week and knew that a fair number of other people knew about it and that it was likely to be in the public domain before long.

“I was slightly uncomfortable about doing the story while the player was still at the Sporting Chance clinic and unable to put his side of the story.

“But I knew that no one else would do it as sensitively and less sensationally as we have done in tomorrow’s paper, so we’ve run it, even though the club would rather we had held on to it.”

Gary revealed his thoughts on the subject in his own blog on the newspaper’s website.

He also explained how one of the paper’s columnists, Christian Roberts, the Swindon Town striker, had been treated at the same clinic last year for alcoholism, giving an insight into how the clinic works and what it takes to go through treatment there.

And he told how Chippenham chairman Sandie Webb pledged the club would support Mark while his manager, Adie Mings, was still loyally denying all knowledge of the story the evening before publication.

The story was covered on the front and back pages of this week’s edition, and the paper contacted the clinic itself for a comment on the general nature of treatment there, its chief executive revealing: “It is often a life or death situation”.

The Gazette & Herald was named EDF Energy South West Weekly Newspaper of the Year last summer and more recently, the best paid for weekly newspaper in Wales and the South West at the Weekly Newspaper Awards.