Daily Echo banned from St Marys

Events at Saints took a curious turn today, with the Daily Echo revealing today that they have been banned from St Marys.

It appears this draconian measure has been taken by Nicola Cortese after the paper, which has never before been banned from a Saints ground in its 121 year history, published a fairly innocent report concerning the proposed training ground developments on Tuesday.

This was a day before the official website put out its press release, although the news was picked up on by local radio and the BBC website carried the story on Wednesday.

It does not seem as if the Echo broke any laws as details of the planning application had already been published by New Forest District Council and the article does not contain any malicious or defamatory content. If this act is the result of a fit of pique on the part of Nicola Cortese at not getting to get the news out first it seems a very odd and unimportant issue to get wound up about.

It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few days. The Echo has its critics amongst fans but no one wants to support a football club that is going to take such a dictatorial stance with the media. One gets the impression there is more to this than meets the eye. Watch this space...