Sir, - The essence of quotation is that what is quoted is what the person actually said. While a little "cleaning up" is permissible to avoid repetition and confusion, the person's tone, character and individual voice should be preserved and conveyed to the reader. However, your soccer correspondent, Peter Byrne, consistently contrives to convey what some critics of the Irish manager, Mick McCarthy, can only dream of - having someone else entirely in the job. Are we really to believe that our former "Captain Fantastic", when "quoted" about Roy Keane's recovery from injury in Monday's edition, put it quite thus: "Presumably, he has moved on from there but Alex Ferguson will not wish to risk him until such time as he feels that the player's recovery is complete." Anyone who has heard the Barnsley boy speak before must wonder if it isn't Byrne's brogue they read instead. - Yours, etc., Gerard Arthurs,
(journalism lecturer),
Hazel Park, Dublin 6.