by Philip Kitcher

“A lowly Scottish soccer club, which once had ‘James Bond’ actor Sean Connery on its books,
has been given a six-point deduction for having a sloping field.”
—US News and World Report

To the Scottish Professional Football League

Dear Sirs,
The fans in Bonnyrigg
were feeling proud and thinking big,
till you unjustly stripped away
points fairly earned in honest play.
No football team should ever yield
its right to use a slanted field:
remember that both sides defend
for half the game at either end.
The time I spent at Gordonstoun
taught me to take the up-and-down;
we teenage boys soon learned to cope
with all varieties of slope.
We soldiered on, and took our lumps
on pitches that were full of bumps.
We played on when the goals would flood,
when footballs would be lost in mud,
we played through hail, we played through snow,
we played where milksops feared to go.
All brawny Scotsmen should oppose
this treatment of the Bonny Rose.
Your Bonny Prince, I must respond
to save the heritage of Bond.
Your mollycoddling’s absurd—
I countermand it!
Charles the Third