Sports Letters: Poor puns

Sir: I am fed up with hearing television football pundits (particularly, it seems, Scottish ones) talking interminably about "the back of the net." When a shot hits the side netting, it has missed. When a goalie tips a lob on to the top of the net, he's saved it. So it seems to follow that the aim of the striker should not be to hit the "back of the net".

Let them stick it instead in the back of the goal, or hit the front of the net. Or better, just stick it in the net, nice and simple; football's a simple game, after all. Let's consign this unlovely phrase to the bin of history where it belongs, along with Frank McLintock's classic "the boy Lineker done good".

ALAN SMITH

Heaton Moor, Stockport