The man prosecutors called the ?chief attacker? in the Frendship Trophy gang fights last year was imprisoned for seven years on Friday for his role.

In full view of a thousand soccer fans ? including children ? John Stephen Glasgow, 22 of Spring Hill Road, Warwick chopped Tarik Foster with a machete at Wellington Oval on April 4, and pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

But the sentence will be served at the same time as a six year sentence for breaking a man?s jaw with one punch in 2003.

?The victim was set upon by a group of persons who fell upon him with their machetes like sharks in a feeding frenzy,? Justice Carlisle Greaves said in Supreme Court on Friday.

?One can hardly put oneself in the shoes of the victim, with all those lacerations without a certain shrinking of the skin?.

Crown Counsel Cindy Clarke said as the game was about to start at 3 p.m. at the St. George?s club 1,000 spectators saw ?a violent altercation in the south-west corner of the club spilled out to the field?.

Ms Clarke said Glasgow was the ?chief attacker? in the first wave of attacks as the victim was kicked and attacked with weapons as he lay helpless on the ground.

?The defendant was the leader in the first wave of attacks,? she said. ?Chopping the complainant about the arms, legs and head with a machete?.

Glasgow hit Foster with the machete at least three times on the victim?s head, but when the victim tried to get on his feet ?the defendant and two others forced him back to the ground,? she said.

They beat him again two to three times and hit his legs numerous times with the machete.

Glasgow was then seen to walk away from the area.

?Parts of the incident were caught on video and photographed,? she said and Police and spectators were traumatised by what they saw.

After Glasgow was arrested he told Police that before he ran onto the pitch he ?heard screaming and saw people chasing the victim?. He admitted to attacking the victim on the ground despite other people trying to help him.

He said he did not know how many times he hit him but that he ?knew he hit him more than once?.

He ?didn?t even know the victim?s name... People tried to calm him down but it went in one ear and out the other,? he said.

Doctors at KEMH admitted the victim at 3.57 p.m. saying he had been involved in a gang fight and was falling in and out of consciousness during the beating on the field.

Surgery was required to fix multiple lacerations to the areas of his ribs, forehead, index finger, throat, abdomen, elbow, sternum and forearm.

A tourniquet needed to be applied, she said.

Tendons on his fingers were ?very lacerated? and were not reparable. Six weeks after the attack the victim could not make a fist.

Ms Clarke asked for Glasgow to be given seven to nine years imprisonment, adding that as he was on bail for punching 49-year-old carpenter Allen Robinson his new sentence needed to be one of ?deterrence and denunciation?.

However, his lawyer Llewelyn Peniston said Glasgow was drunk at the time and ?some clear indication must be given that an early plea of guilty will have some value?.

In December, Glasgow was found guilty of robbery using personal violence on Tribe Road Number Three in Paget, on December 12, 2003.

?If he could break a man?s jaw-box with a single kuff,? the judge pondered, ?imagine the damage he could deliver with a machete!?