I received a call late yesterday afternoon from a HK-based friend - G Shepherd - who informed me she had decided to nominate this website for the Sport 927 Internet awards that AAP Racing & Sports had thrown a link to on their website.

"That's very kind of you - many thanks" I said (as one should in such situations).

"No, there's a problem," she said "I submitted the entry outlining a web site I liked in each of the categories. When I checked to see it had been posted they had printed the post and the other websites - but deleted the reference to Athlone."

Interesting; perhaps more so considering I had received another email over the weekend from someone in Australia noting that they had also nominated the site but their post hadn't even appeared on the AAP site.

The issue raises the rather intriguing question of 'free press' -and also the integrity of the awards in question. Given the original AAP post invites the general public for nominations I can only wonder what other sites have fallen prey to AAP's "self censorship" policy.

I guess we'll never know.