Matt Pridham's mother was twice told to prepare for her son's death as he lay in intensive care, his life hanging in the balance after a pointless alcohol-fuelled attack in Civic.
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Amid a mess of tubes, wires, and blinking monitor lights, Matt Pridham spent weeks in an induced coma while doctors fought to relieve the swelling to his brain caused by a punch and the dead weight of his head against concrete.
In court on Friday, Mr Pridham's parents Elizabeth and David recalled the trauma of being woken by police banging on their windows, seeing their son on the "brink of death", and the weeks and then months spent in hospitals.
Mrs Pridham said she had been told to prepare for the worst in Canberra Hospital's intensive care unit, as doctors fought to relieve pressure on her son's brain.
"They do not say this to a mother lightly," she said from the witness box.
The man who delivered the offending blow, Levi Freeman-Quay, was sentenced to nine months behind bars on Friday, two years after the drunken brawl on Bunda Street.
Freeman-Quay can't remember the drunken brawl, and his friends and colleagues said he has taken the news of Mr Pridham's injuries hard.
The offender, formerly a promising junior Raiders player, took to the witness box on Friday to tell the family he was "deeply sorry".
"Me being a dad myself, I can't imagine the pain and heartache that Matt and his family are going through," he said.
The offences occurred in the early hours of a September morning in 2013, when two groups in Civic got into a scuffle outside the ActewAGL building.
Mr Pridham made a derogatory comment and Freeman-Quay became aggressive.
Freeman-Quay, after a trial, was not found to have intended to target the blow at Mr Pridham. But he was found to have thrown a punch that caused the injuries that will affect Mr Pridham for the rest of his life.
The victim spent the next 12 months in hospitals in Canberra and Sydney, slowly relearning how to write, read, eat, pick things up, and speak.
Mr Pridham's slow recovery is continuing, although he has a permanent brain injury and still struggles with everyday tasks.
In sentencing Freeman-Quay, Chief Justice Helen Murrell described the attack as "yet another example of alcohol-fuelled, gratuitous violence perpetrated by young men who are greatly intoxicated in the centre of Canberra".
"They arouse the abhorrence of the community. They place vulnerable people ... in danger and they cry out for a strong message of deterrence," she said.
Chief Justice Helen Murrell sentenced Freeman-Quay to two years imprisonment, from a maximum of five, with seven months to serve for the offence of causing grievous bodily harm.
He will serve another two months for another assault on one of Mr Pridham's friends, and was fined $750 for another assault on a second friend. The rest of the two year jail sentence was suspended.
Outside of court, Mr Pridham's aunt Lisa Willett said the family's feelings were mixed following the sentencing.
"It's a very mixed feeling, I've always said we're hopeful that he gets a jail sentence, but watching what just went on inside the courtroom was pretty tough."
"But hopefully, one punch violence, we'll get a message to young blokes out there that this is an unattractive thing to do."
Freeman-Quay will be released in June.
