Paper Claims To ID Injunction Footie Star

A Scottish national newspaper has claimed it has identified the footballer at the centre of a legal injunction.

The Sunday Herald published a full page headshot of a football star on its front page - merely covering his eyes with a black bar, which features the word 'censored'.

The newspaper's actions come after a player obtained an injunction to prevent details of an alleged affair with former Big Brother contestant, Imogen Thomas, being published.

Technically, the newspaper is free to publish the footballer's name, as the injunction does not apply in Scotland.

However, most publications have not exploited this opportunity because of the possibility that copies would be sold south of the border.

In an editorial, the newspaper defended its decision by saying: "We believe it unsustainable that the law can be used to prevent newspapers from publishing information that readers can access at the click of a mouse.

"We should point out immediately that we are not accusing the footballer concerned of any misdeed.

"Whether the allegations against him are true or not has no relevance to this debate."

Richard Walker, editor of the Sunday Herald, told Sky News: "At one point we were thinking of using a picture that was pixelated.

"But when we were thinking about it more deeply, we realised that the injunction didn't apply in Scotland and therefore we did not need to pixelate the picture.

"It's not a story about the allegations...that is not relevant to the issues we believe have been raised by this.

"We are looking at the issue of free speech...of newspapers being prevented from publishing information which our readers can access very, very easily."

The near-unmasking is the latest blow to the player's attempts to keep his identity under wraps.

Users of Twitter posted messages claiming to reveal who he was as soon as news of the injunction first emerged.

Then the messages spiked last week as the player's lawyers announced he would be suing the website and "persons unknown" for breaching the court order.

At one point the name of a particular footballer was mentioned at a rate of up to 16 times a minute.

A spokesman for Schillings, the law firm representing the footballer, said: "An application has been made to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order."