Former Dundee player Declan Gallagher has been sent back to jail after appeal judges rejected his challenge against conviction for a brutal attack.
Livingston defender Gallagher was sentenced to three years imprisonment last year along with co-accused hairdresser Anthony Murray for the serious assault.
They were released on bail pending appeal and Gallagher has been playing for the Championship side since.
Gallagher, 24 and Murray, 30 were returned to prison after three judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh decided there had been no misdirection by Sheriff Douglas Brown at their earlier trial at Hamilton Sheriff Court.
Gallagher, of Heron Rise, Dundee, and Murray, of Ashley Place, Blantyre, were convicted of assaulting Steven Findlay to his severe injury and to the danger of his life in an attack at The Parkville Hotel, in the Lanarkshire town’s Glasgow Road on April 21 in 2013.
While acting with others they repeatedly punched and kicked him on the head and body and knocked him to the ground and struck him on the head with a baseball bat or similar implement.
The victim suffered head wounds, a fractured skull and brain haemorrhage and a paramedic kept talking to him to try to keep him conscious as he was taken to hospital after the assault.
After signing from Clyde, Gallagher played 60 times for Dundee over two seasons from 2012, scoring four times.