Here is the e-mail exchange that passed between Salut! Sunderland and Birmingham City's press office concerning our request for the briefest of e-mail interviews with Kevin Phillips:
Sept 13 2008. Salut! Sunderland to club
Hello (sorry, but I do not have the press/media officer's name),
I am a British journalist working in Abu Dhabi, where I have been helping to launch the new English language daily, The National, but also run - as a labour of love - my own small Sunderland AFC-related website at http://salutsunderland.com
I am a huge admirer of Kevin Phillips and will always look on him as one of the Sunderland players to have given me most pleasure in what is now approaching half a century as a supporter.
My request is simple, and I'd greatly appreciate if you could at least run it by him: would he be willing to do a very quick Q&A interview by e-mail (phone is fine by me but e-mail may be more appropriate given the distance/time difference) which I could publish a few days before either the Aston Villa v Sunderland game (Sept 27) or the Sunderland v Arsenal tie a week later.
I would supply the 10 questions and he could answer in whatever fashion and at whatever length he chose. There would naturally be nothing inflammatory about the nature of any of the questions.
The choice of games relates 1) to another of his clubs (Villa) and 2) to the team he supported as a boy (Arsenal).
I hope you and he will feel that this is something he could do. I would be happy to make a nominal donation to a charity of his choice (the site does not make money, but its costs are offset slightly by advertising, which I have just started to attract, and I could reserve say one month's income from that, 50 euros, for such a purpose).
Thanks for your attention and good luck for the season ahead.
Regards
Colin Randall
Oct 1/2: Phone call to Birmingham City press office confirms receipt of the e-mail. Someone says that although it is now too late for the games mentioned, the request will be considered for appropriate fixtures later in the season. She does not offer great encouragement that the answer will be Yes.
Oct 3 2008. Club to Salut! Sunderland
Hi Colin,
Great to hear from you, and I hope all is going well for you out there.Unfortunately we will not be able to grant you a Kevin Phillips interview as we have a policy of retaining the players’ services for official club mediums first and foremost and then other media requests. Sadly we are not able to accommodate requests from fans’ sites.I do hope you understand and am sorry we’re unable to help on this occasion.
Kind regards,
Chris</em>
Oct 3. Salut! Sunderland to club:
Club policy is club policy and no hard feelings. But it never fails to astonish me how clubs are perfectly happy to take a great deal from fans without always giving an awful lot back; my own club blithely took and used a full page, professionally written - and free! - feature for a matchday programme and only then said it would deny me even a tiny footnote linking to my site, something a fans' site/fanzine would never dream of doing.I suppose one way of looking at it is to see the gap between club and supporters (all supporters) getting wider. The very minor tragedy - ok, that's too strong, disappointing aspect is better - of the Kevin Phillips one is that he knows how much he is still revered by the vast majority of fans for what he achieved at Sunderland, and would probably have been quite willing to take what, 15 minutes to answer 10 questions.
But I say all that without any personal rancour and appreciate your courteous reply.
best
colin