Responding to a number of evident mistakes made during recent Premier League games, Kenny Dalglish (10 April) suggests referees need to look at themselves. But, despite the conspiracy at which Dalglish hints, referees' shortcomings are generally accepted as inadvertent; the transgressions of players are deliberate and calculating. Officials' jobs would be much easier if footballers did not persistently cheat – and they would cheat less if managers did not tacitly condone their behaviour.
High stakes are used by the first-class football community to excuse players' "commitment", but rewards for success and the cost of failure are no less in golf or tennis, in which sportsmanship and self-regulation are considerably more apparent. It is, no doubt, unrealistic to expect the adoption by professional football of the Corinthian values still exhibited in some sports, but shirt-tugging, diving, harassing referees and feigning injury to get an opponent sent off are forms of cheating to which the managers of those responsible should react honestly and punitively.
Peter Lowe
Newcastle upon Tyne