he made sure we controlled who went flying and who not.

guess he could also have been called “Air Traffic Control”…

i meant to say airforce, as that is what we called it. i put it into quotation, as it was a specific name we used.

the concept may be more established for ice hockey. but it is present in all sports or possibly in life: we hope there is a referee to punish bad behaviour. but if there isn’t, we have to take things into our own hands.

i am not necessarily talking about violence here. if at your job someone constantly tries to sabotage you, violence may not be the best approach. but some dirty play on your side, might just discourage the behaviour enough. obviously that should only be considered, if theere is no sort of referee to stop the behaviour traditionally.

we had an ‘airforce’ player in our team. he usually was only on the field, if the other team played dirty. the most dirty opponent would have a painful clash with our ‘airforce’. the game usually was a bit more civilised after that.

was it the right thing to do? probably not. would we have sent the ‘airforce’ if the referee had stopped dirty plays earlier? definitely not! did it protect other players from going home with injuries? yes!

so no, violence is not the only correct thing to do. but it is a way to achieve certain goals. sometimes fire has to be fought with fire.