PRIOR to Euro 2012 I tried to set up an interview with James McClean. He was at Sunderland at the time and Republic of Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni was preparing to roll the dice by including the Derryman in his 23-man squad bound for Poland.
Earlier that season, I’d attended Sunderland’s home game with Spurs at the Stadium of Light and became acquainted with one of the club’s press officers.
A couple of months before the Euros finals were due to commence I emailed a request to Sunderland about the possibility of interviewing McClean.
I wasn’t hopeful.
The reply came back: “Unfortunately we’ve agreed with James not to make him available for any interviews just at the moment…
“Please can I just ask that all interview requests come through the club and not through the player, his family or his agent too as is it can be quite disruptive when we’re trying to maintain workable media commitments for players in line with our own manager’s, Board’s and owner’s wishes?... but thank you very much for considering him.”
McClean had received some offensive tweets around the time of my request and maybe the club wanted him to stay out of the spotlight, but unfortunately we never reached the point where the parameters of a potential interview were discussed.
Upon reading this very polite reply from Sunderland I had to check if I was on the club’s payroll and free to work independently.
The club was stating McClean was off-limits and I’d be best forgetting about it – a classic example of a press officer trying to dictate to the media the terms of engagement, or non-engagement in this instance.
I don’t envy the work conditions of those across the water reporting on the English Premiership.
It’s certainly not as glamorous a gig as some people might think.
The Sunderland manager David Moyes has been in the news for all the wrong reasons this week for telling BBC reporter Vicki Sparks that she might get a “slap” for asking what he viewed as impertinent questions after the side’s draw with Burnley.
“Careful the next time you come in,” Moyes added.
In a statement the Sunderland manager expressed “profound regret” over his comments.
Of course, Sunderland isn’t alone in trying to dictate to the media what type of questions their manager, coaches or players receive.
It’s the prevailing culture of many big clubs.
Everything and everybody must be controlled.
In short, it’s control freakery.
Former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson had regular run-ins with journalists. He came to hate press conferences.
There is footage of the fiery Scot absolutely seething with their reporter John Motson in a post-match interview after he'd asked about Roy Keane’s recent red card.
The Guardian journalist Daniel Taylor was banned from attending any of Manchester United’s press conferences.
In 2007, Taylor wrote a book entitled ‘This is The One: Sir Alex Ferguson: the Uncut Story of a Footballing Genius’.
In an interview with The Irish Times in 2011, Taylor explained: “He [Ferguson] never read the book, but got a press officer to do it for him. They said it was fine and recommended no action, but he said to ban me anyway. I must be the only person ever to get banned from anything in which I called them a genius on the front cover.”
Last year, the award-winning Taylor was banned from Nottingham Forest’s press box because he had attended a game there six months earlier and it was noted he did not file a match report.
“Bizarre,” was how Taylor explained his latest infringement.
“It is what a football correspondent does,” Taylor said. “Watch games, meet people, see the managers, get information…”
At home, the GAA has had its moments too when it infamously ejected my journalist colleague Declan Bogue from post-match proceedings at the behest of All-Ireland winning manager Jim McGuinness.
If press officers at these big English Premiership clubs had their way, journalists would bin any trace of independent thought and become docile cheerleaders.
Criticism would be scorned as a result and our profession would be reduced to a joke.
The reason why managers and coaches have a healthy ambivalence towards the media is because they can’t control them.
That’s when petulance comes racing to the surface.
You see it almost on a weekly basis from celebrated alchemists like Pep Guardiola who regularly throws the toys out of the pram when he's asked questions from journalists in post-match scenarios.
David Moyes’s threatening comments towards Vicki Sparks were eclipsed this week by none other than Jose Mourinho.
The Portuguese has been guilty of many things in his career: from eye-gouging the late Tito Vilanova to forcing esteemed referee Anders Frisk into premature retirement after he questioned the Dane's integrity during his first spell at Chelsea, and his obnoxious behaviour towards former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro last season.
But the Manchester United manager sunk to a new low this week – even by his grubby standards – by humiliating his own player, Luke Shaw, telling reporters that he only performed well because he was on his side of the pitch (against Everton) and he could think for the player.
Mourinho’s criticism amounted to a public stoning. It was a classless act.
In an interview, Shaw admitted his manager’s criticism was “hard to take” but he would fight to get into the team.
You would imagine the former Southampton player has strong grounds for claiming harassment in the workplace.
And yet we forget this behaviour after a while and mindlessly celebrate these self-aggrandising managers, backed by slick PR machines.
Sunderland and Moyes did the right thing by making a swift apology to Vicki Sparks - even though the manager was "surprised" by the media attention his comments received.
If only in the interests of human decency, surely Luke Shaw deserves a public apology from his manager.
Right now, though, you'd be right in wondering what strategy the Old Trafford press office department has in place to deal with their manager's spiteful analysis of one of its own players that leaves an ugly stain on the club's reputation.
Or do these PR people only show their teeth to the press?
