if you assess by 'severity' then you aren't discouraging 'brawling', its akin to licensing a free 'lesser' shot & could inadvertently be brawl 'encouraging' !
Photographing a fire hot spot won't prevent the next fire.
Referees deal with Offences, retaliators must know they risk decision reversal, even if they've personally been wronged en route.
I agree 100% in theory. Practice is more difficult, especially in the absence of TMO, or even just ARs, which most of us do not have the luxury of.
Players have to accept that the referee made the right decision, because the referee is always right BY LAW. Brawls often start with an incident which only a trailing AR
should see.
Brawls should be rare. They are in my experience, and I would hope also in the experience of most grass-roots referees. Unlike for example the ruck - in my experience the hardest thing for both new and experienced (but fat and slow) referees to improve at, they don't occur often enough that we can practice our skills of observation.
What I'm getting at is that if you know what the original offence was, and who was the initial retaliator (not a word?), then it is fine to go with the "Law" of a single reversal, even if for sake of argument a player later gets kicked in the head and gets RCd whilst the first two "only" got YCd.
I agree with SimonSmith that handling the incident - both trying to de-escalate it and mentally note numbers and offences - is more important than getting the right call, because the players not only have to accept it, but because both captains know it was not a refereeing error that caused the brawl in the first place. (Yes, perceived poor refereeing can contribute to the risk of a brawl happening, but it will usually start with an incident in the flow of play).
