If any of those fields that you have in that statement have a quote (either ' or ") you're going to have problems.

Instead, it's probably better to use placeholders for this case--DBI will automagically escape any quotes in the values that you pass to protect from this problem.

my $sth3 = $dbh->prepare( 
   q(
      UPDATE league SET played=?, won=?, fr=?, ag=?, points=? 
      WHERE year=?, sport=?, group=? 
   ) ) or die DBI->errstr;
$sth3->execute( $playeda, $wona, $fora, $againsta,
   $pointsa, $thisyear, $sport, $group ) or die DBI->errstr;
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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain