A Scottish daily newspaper has announced it is turning off the comments facility on all football stories on its website.

The Daily Record says its online platform www.dailyrecord.co.uk is being plagued by foul language, personal abuse and sectarianism.

It says it has continued to see an “unacceptable level of behaviour” despite recently introducing a system of comment registration.

The Trinity Mirror owned daily announced the decision in a message to readers on the site today. It read:

“Please note that from today we are turning off the facility to comment on all football stories on our website.

“This is a decision which has not been taken lightly. We value the opinions of our readers but, despite the introduction of a Facebook registration system,  we continue to see an unacceptable level of behaviour that breaches our terms and conditions.

“We are talking about personal abuse directed against other users and members of our staff, foul language, hate speech, sectarianism and systematic, tit-for-tat deletion of posts.

“It will still be possible to comment on non-football stories but we will be enforcing a zero tolerance policy on users who add inapproriate, off-topic comments about football to otherwise unrelated articles. We will also be clamping down on users who attempt to register using false names.

“To the genuine posters, who have obeyed the rules and made a worthwhile contribution to our site, our apologies, but this move has been forced upon us. Please continue to enjoy our site.

“We would remind all readers that we are a family-orientated newspaper and website. We do not tolerate comments which are obscene, threatening, defamatory, hateful, racially or ethnically abusive or blasphemous.”