Updated

An Australian thug jailed Friday for brutally battering a complete stranger was caught out by his unfashionable haircut, a court heard.

Zane David Webb's victim told cops his attacker had a rat's tail hairstyle. His dated 1980s look was also spotted by eyewitnesses and used to identify him from CCTV.

Webb and two thug pals laid into their shocked victim in the toilet of a Tasmania nightclub in March last year.

They continued attacking him even after he had fallen against a urinal and had been knocked unconscious.

Their onslaught was so brutal that blood was left splattered across the walls and floor. The victim's jaw was broken in two places and he is permanently scarred from cuts to his face.
A court heard it was not possible to prove who had inflicted each particular injury, but the victim remembered the instigator's dated hairstyle.

"He later remembered that it was someone else, a person he had spoken to earlier on the night, that had blond hair and that the assailant had a rat's tail," Justice Alan Blow said.

"Evidence from other witnesses and from surveillance cameras satisfies me that this prisoner was the only member of the group with a rat's tail hairstyle."

Justice Blow said Webb had shown no remorse for "senseless and unprovoked" attack as he sentenced him to 14 months in jail