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Football club in U-turn over ban on newspaper

A football club has reversed its decision to ban a weekly newspaper from its home ground following a dispute over a four-year-old story carried in a defunct paper.

Glenn Garrett, head of sport for Local World South East, was told earlier today that the Kent & Sussex Courier would not be given accreditation to cover Tonbridge Angels’ upcoming Kent Cup quarter-final at Gillingham FC.

However, Glenn says the restriction has now been reversed and he will be able to attend the match on Monday evening.

The ban is believed to have been borne out of an article carried by the now-defunct Medway News, the Local World-owned Courier’s former sister title.

The story in question speculated about Gillingham’s transfer dealings in the summer of 2011, just a few months before the News was closed by its then-owner Northcliffe.

Northcliffe was sold to Local World the following year.

Gills

Said Glenn: “I’m delighted common sense has prevailed.

“I in no way wanted to cause any problems for Gillingham Football Club, I merely wanted to do my job, which I now can.”

An article explaining the ban from Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium appeared on the Tunbridge Wells-based Courier’s website earlier, featuring a photo of the ground accompanied by the caption “Apparently Priestfield looks like this.”

Said Glenn at the time: “I was surprised when I received an email from the club informing me I would not be given media access to the game, a game that had already frustratingly been rescheduled at late notice.

“I was aware of a long-standing Medway News ban, but the News no longer exists as a newspaper, and the Courier Media Group has not, in my ten years at the paper, been to a game at Priestfield.

Gillingham FC declined to comment on the issue when approached by HTFP.

3 comments

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  • January 23, 2015 at 8:31 am
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    Why have you given-in? Football clubs appear to be able to hold us to ransom as and when they feel like it. I would ignore them for ever more – there are plenty of mass-particiapation sports out there that deserve coverage and appreciate it.

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  • January 23, 2015 at 11:32 am
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    hacking cough. with news coverage so thin because of lack of experienced staff sport is still a good seller.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 10:45 am
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    Sportytype – point taken and our paper does well with sport, but we don’t donate acres of space to one team or one sport. We get more feedback from fishing, bowls and Sunday league than anything else so that’s our market and we stick with it! I just get fed-up of football clubs dictating what we can and can’t do in order to give them publicity all the time.

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