An innocent teenage rugby fan was knocked unconscious then stamped on in a city centre attack.
Student Jordan Cosker, 18, was stuck as he made his way home following Wales' 67-14 Six Nations victory over Italy on March 19.
He was walking to Cardiff Central train station at the time of the vicious attack.
His friends had to pull convicted former football hooligan Jack Martin off him, Cardiff Crown Court heard.
Martin, 27, who has children aged five years old and six months, was drunk and had had a row with his girlfriend, said prosecutor David Pugh.
He claimed to police that she had been subjected to “inappropriate behaviour” by some men but later accepted he had been wrong and had overreacted to a mistake.
Left unconscious
“Mr Cosker was near the train station when he was suddenly aware of being struck and the next thing he knew he was on the ground,” said Mr Pugh.
“The force of a punch to the head rendered him unconscious and, as he lay there, witnesses saw the defendant kick him and then stamp on him twice.”
Martin, who was jailed and given a football banning order in 2011 for wounding, was pulled off the student who remained unconscious until after the police arrived and was operated on in hospital for a broken jaw.
The other attack, five years ago, was said to be similar, because it had too had occurred after a sporting event – that time a match between Cardiff City and Bristol City.
“Then he punched someone to the back of the head and the victim fell into a wall and needed eight stitches to an injury,” Mr Pugh told the court.
He has also in the past had police cautions for affray and common assault and been convicted of a public order breach for fighting outside a pub when he was ejected by door staff.
'Recreational binge drinker'
The judge, Recorder Paul Hopkins QC, said his pattern of violence was escalating and that was “deeply troubling”.
Mr Cosker had been an “entirely blameless victim of his brutality”.
Solicitor Edward Mitchard, mitigating, said there was a different side to Martin, who was a “breadwinner” and “good father”, who had to sit his five-year-old down and explain why he would not be seeing his dad for a while.
“When he’s not drunk he’s extremely pleasant. He’s a recreational binge drinker,” he said.
Mr Mitchard also said the guilty plea to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent had come early and deserved credit.
Recorder Hopkins agreed but said bingeing and “going mad” had turned Martin into a hooligan.
“You behave violently while under the influence of alcohol’” he told him.
He said such unprovoked behaviour in the city centre after a rugby game, when many would have been drinking, had the potential to have caused “widespread public disorder”.
Jailing Martin, of The Bryn, Trethomas, Caerphilly , for four years and eight months, he told him it would have been seven years if he had denied the offence and been convicted by a jury.
In a statement made seven weeks after the attack Mr Cosker said he was still unable, at that time, to eat properly, was having nightmares and flashbacks, and suffering headaches and pain.
“I’ve lost all my confidence and don’t want to go out any more and I’m behind with my college work,” he wrote.
see-http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/dad-two-knocked-innocent-teenage-11440892
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