A London Underground worker launched an unprovoked attack on a man at a urinalin The Globe pub, because he had allegedly mistreated a dog.

Craig Rothwell, 54, left Robert McGurk with a fractured eye socket and a broken nose which had to be re-set in hospital on May 30 last year.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that Rothwell had been part of a group who were drinking in The Globe pub in Morning Lane, Hackney Central, when Mr McGurk came over and greeted them.

One of the group reminded Rothwell that McGurk had previously been in trouble for mistreating a dog more than 20 years earlier.

Rothwell, of Silkmills Square, Homerton, who was an amateur boxer in his teens, followed McGurk into the toilets where he “punched him as hard as he could a number of times” from behind and “head-butted him deliberately”.

He then threw Mr McGurk out of the pub, punching him as he went, which CCTV showed left the pavement outside the pub covered in blood, the court heard.

Mr McGurk required surgery to insert a titanium plate into his eye-socket.

Rothwell was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm to Mr McGurk by a jury following a trial last month and on Friday was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay £800 compensation.

Rothwell insisted the incident was a case of self-defence which had simply gone too far, but this explanation was not accepted by the court.

The judge, Mr Recorder Gareth Branston, ruled that only a custodial sentence was appropriate in the circumstances.

“It was not your place to enact some sort of punishment,’ he said.

“It was you that caused these serious injuries and the after-effects.

“You used a weapon – your head. That was only one of the blows you administered.

“I do not accept that there was any sort of provocation.”