Another week, another PR own goal at the Brandywell, with City's kneejerk reaction to one overblown headline in a local tabloid the latest in a string of recent embarrassing headlines. The item centred on comments ex-winger Paddy McCourt made to a reporter for the Derry News in which he criticised the board for not releasing midfielder Kevin Deery to pursue a move across the Channel.
The original story did little more than prompt seasoned local observers to shrug resignedly at another sensationalist story from a sensationalist rag. For context, this is a 'newspaper' that once had to run a front page apology for publishing doctored images of Pope Benedict XVI apparently holding a glass of beer and a pretzel instead of a chalice and communion. Yet instead of taking the criticism on the proverbial or making a statement defending themselves, the club took the foolhardy step of banishing the paper, it's employees, and with them the moral high-ground, to the sidelines. It's a stupid decision and it fully merits all the criticism it gets.
Come Monday, and said rag was able to run with the back page headline, “Gagged!” to describe the treatment meted out to them by the club. And just a day later
Roy Greenslade was blogging about it on
The Guardian website: “This is but the latest example of such bans. Others who have fallen out with their local clubs include
The News (Portsmouth) and the
Croydon Advertiser (Crystal Palace). Hartlepool United banned both
The Northern Echo and the
Hartlepool Mail for a two-month period until October last year. When will clubs learn to take the rough with the smooth?”
It should be pointed out here that this is a paper that reports fairly extensively on Derry matches and that often carries features and interviews on the team. Noone at The Times (or even the Derry Journal) have even been quivering in their boots by the quality of the writing or the editing, but with the club seemingly unwilling or incapable of carrying out basic self-promotion in the past, the decision to ban a source of regular free publicity seems an odd one, to say the least. What next, banning any paper reporting on a Derry City defeat? The Candystripes have not only shot the messenger but also themselves in the foot.
There is a suggestion that the ban could have been retaliation for the newspaper's inability to keep it's promise of sponsorship money earlier in the season but if that was the case, why take action now, when that action will only be associated in people's minds with a critical headline? Surely if a statement needed to be made that badly it should have been made at the time?
It's a childish rebuke and it smacks of a club in crisis, and one which would appear from the outside at least to find it easy apportioning blame to anyone but themselves: an
official statement last week warned that, “Many will sit back and say ‘I told you so’ with a certain amount of glee-” surely a swipe at those who had previously hinted at the potential for financial trouble. It's Wizard of Oz tactics- attempting to distract and deflect attention to anywhere but the club itself.
But no, everything is just fine, nothing is wrong and for God's sake don't listen to those who say anything different. In fact, just in case you're tempted to, we'll ban them anyway. Then we won't have to hear anything bad, will we?
