Gordon Smith returned from work to his home in Park Crescent, Newtown St Boswells, last night to learn that his attacker, Paul Paterson, had been jailed for six years.

The 50-year-old bachelor, a warehouseman in the Galashiels cloth finishing works of Maxwell Schofield, said: ''I'm glad he will be out of circulation. If it hadn't been me he set upon, it would have been someone else. The public needs protecting from people like that.

''I still don't feel particularly bitter. I still just don't understand why it happened. It was so totally senseless.''

Mr Smith, who is a past president of the St Boswells Rugby Club, had been walking home last February after watching the Scotland v Ireland rugby international on television at his local the Dryburgh Arms.

He said: ''I knew Paterson by sight, but he just set on me out of the blue. It's all very vague now. I remember his fists going up and the next thing I knew was waking up in Borders General Hospital.

''The first friend who visited me walked right past the bed. He didn't recognise me. When I went into the washroom later to look in the mirror I was horrified at the mess my face was in. I looked like a nightmare.''

That was before the transfer to Edinburgh City Hospital where surgeons carried out the seven-and-a-half-hour operation that reconstructed Mr Smith's face.

He said: ''I can never thank them enough. What they have done is just magnificent I would not have thought it possible.

''I feel pretty good now. There was a lot of pain at first but it is much better. My vision is not so good late at night. But considering that I could quite easily be dead I'm grateful to be out and about and back at work.''

The former St Boswells rugby three-quarter and club captain said: ''I've kept myself pretty fit and I think that helped my recovery. If it had been someone older or frailer I think the outcome could have been very different.''