Judge Donagh McDonagh said the headbutt was a cowardly, vicious kind of attack which left the victim with no chance of defending himself.

There was an outburst of loud crying from a number of women in the public gallery at Courtroom 1 at Cork Circuit Criminal Court when the sentence was imposed on Kris Collins of Millhouse, Murphy’s Rock, Old Mallow Rd, Cork, who pleaded guilty to the charge of assault causing serious harm to Sherzad Ismail in Cork City on September 7, 2014.

Judge McDonagh said the injured party was as much an Irish citizen as anyone else on Oliver Plunkett St, Cork, that Saturday night/Sunday morning.

The judge referred to the description of the incident given by Collins in his probation report. He said two foreign nationals had approached his girlfriend.

An ambulance was called but the injured party and his friend said they would make their own way home. The next day, the injured party’s family found him lying unconscious on the floor at home. Doctors found a massive clot bleeding on to his brain and they had to put him in to an induced coma.

Christine Mullins, the injured party’s wife, said her husband’s life changed after the assault and that his happy disposition had changed.

Collins said: “I want to apologise to the family. I am sorry for what I did. I didn’t mean to cause him that much harm.”

The judge commented on the last part of the apology and said the only inference one could make was that he certainly intended harm.