And the defendants, 30-year-old Keith Pritchard of Spring Hill Cottages, Fosse Way, Offchurch and Lee McLauchlan, 24, of Normandy Close, Hampton Magna, each received an eight month prison sentence suspended for 18 months, 100 hours community service and a £100 fine after pleading guilty to affray.

At Warwick Crown Court on Friday David Everett, prosecuting, said that on March 7 brothers Martin and Andrew Bloss went out in Leamington town centre with Kylie Muir and Kimberley Mills and during the evening they all became drunk.

After leaving a bar at 11.30pm the women began to argue and as the men went to separate the women McLauchlan and Pritchard intervened by attacking Martin Bloss.

Mr Everitt explained that in his basis of plea McLauchlan had admitted to kicking one of the brothers and slapping the other, though not in self defence, when he thought one of them had become “heavy handed” with one of the women.

McLauchlan said he had previously asked the brother to leave the woman alone.

Pritchard’s basis of plea was that he had also intervened when he felt one of the brothers had been “heavy handed” with the woman.

Mr Everitt, who said both defendants had been trained to restrain as door staff “rather than get involved in this way”, played a CCTV recording of the incident.

This showed Pritchard and McLauchlan throwing punches and kicks at both of the Bloss brothers while they were on the ground, which left Martin unconscious for ten minutes and Andrew with a cut lip.

David Jones, defending Pritchard, said this was not a gratuitous attack by two people on two others in the street but an attempt by both defendants to break up an argument.

He added: “The woman was shouting ‘get him off me’, and that is when the defendants intervened.

“They had the perception at least, of rescuing a woman in trouble.”

Jones described the actions of Pritchard, a tree surgeon who previously worked as a doorman for eight years, as his “only fall from grace”.

Sean Logan defending McLauchlan, a gardener who lost his other job as a doorman because of the affray, said the defendant had initially “acted in defence of another” and although he used his feet they did not connect.

But Judge Hodson said: “I’m satisfied he stamped a number of times, three to the body and two to the head.

“They thought they were going in as rescuers.

“But what they did afterwards was too aggressive.”

And sentencing the defendants, the judge said: “You are not being punished because you went to rescue, but because you turned it into a piece of gratuitous violence.

“It has been pretty marginal, but I have come to the conclusion that I can suspend the sentences.”