Detective Superintendent Paul Taylor, of West Yorkshire Police's Homicide and Major Enquiry Team, said: "The victim is in a very serious condition in hospital and we are obviously extremely concerned about him.

"The area outside the Skyrack was absolutely packed at the time with people who had been out to watch the England game. I am convinced there will be a lot of people who will have seen what happened and I urge them to contact us with any information.

"Please don't think that you can leave it for others to come forward with information. We need to hear from anyone who was there and saw what happened.

"I am also making a direct appeal to the person responsible for the assault or anyone who may have been with him at the time. Now is the opportunity for you to come forward and tell us your side of things."

Anyone with any information is asked to contact detectives at Weetwood police station via 0845 6060606 or contact Crimestoppers, anonymously and in confidence, on 0800 555 111.

[urlhttp://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Man-attacked-outside-Leeds-pub.6360446.jp[/url

Went past there yesterday, the whole road was cordoned off with an evidence tent erected, they're obviously treating it as a very serious incident.

Your getting some serious characters hanging around Headingley these days. I accidentally walked into someone a few weeks ago in the Box and he pushed me and told me to watch what I was doing.

Looks like I got off easy.

The fact they are appealing for the actual perpetrator to come forward is telling for me! Clearly this guy is seriously ill and reading between the lines, the Police seem to be saying come forward now and possibly make things easier on yourself!

I cannot comment on this incident, but my mate was slashed with a knife outside the Skyrack, probably 10 years ago now. The assailant slit his cheek from his mouth to his ear.

Apparently he was singled out in the pub, probably because he is quite a well built big lad. Out of the blue some random person started a bit of a scuffle with him. My friend's glasses were knocked off and the pair were thrown out by the bouncers. The gang that was with the assailant taunted my mate outside the pub then the nut job made his move. He attacked from behind, reached over his shoulder and BANG. The gang and the nutter ran off immediately. The Police reckoned it was some sort of gang/dare attack. They never caught the feller, and apparently didn't do anything to catch him either. Meanwhile my best mate ends up in hospital with a extremely serious facial injury, and is now permanently scared... probably in more than one way. I wasn’t there, but a friend of ours was with him and he corroborates that it was a completely unprovoked attack, which I believe.

What would motivate somebody to do such a cowardly thing? The world is a very mad and dangerous place sometimes.

It is such a sad state of affairs.

That's dreadful, absolutely dreadful.

Headingley and in particular the Skyrack is often packed to the rafters with cricket and rugby supporters for both the home and away teams without the merest hint of trouble.

Bang a high profile kickyball game on the big screen and bingo – trouble. There were also a couple of incidents in Millennium Square while the England game was being screened.

I’m not saying that all soccer fans are hooligans but it seems to attract more than its fair share of trouble causers.

terrible - but there are lots of complete nutjobs out there, you never know which idiot is stood just up the bar from you .

Just look at the incident last week on the bridge over the ring-road at Bramley . A young lad killed . He wasn't a bad lad either . I met him a time or two . He leaves behind a little girl who will never know her daddy . I have a daughter same age as her . Makes you realise how abruptly life can be ended and for such nonsensical reasons .

I was absolutely gutted for him, and can't imagine how he feels/felt. He's never been back to the best of my knowledge.

Funilly enough, these type of incidents are unheard of when England play a meaningless friendly or a qualifier. It supports my theory that the World Cup attracts a whole bunch of bandwaggoing idiots who don't know how to behave themselves, it's exactly why I pick and choose where I watch major tournament matches.

...and alcohol.

When you spend a night out completely sober you realise very quickly that if alcohol was invented now it would be a classified drug and not just sold to any random nutter with enough money in his pocket - drive through Headingley anytime after 8pm on a Friday or Saturday night and you see exactly what the effects of consuming alcohol all afternoon do for a person, if it weren't for the fact that the traffic is normally stationary at that time of night (perhaps deliberately) then there would be carnage on the road between The Oak and North Lane.

Drive through Headingley at 3pm when the sun is out

It was outside the Skyrack where that nutter pushed my girlfriend to the ground and tried to punch me, after racially abusing Bernard the Box doorman a few weeks back.

Maybe it was him.

we were going on holiday early hours of a sunday one year, and i was having to drive, so had a dry saturday night and went to Naffees for a curry at about 11pm - absolutley amazing to witness sober.

So you know the incident was football related?

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out mate it's like a national disease.
Major footy tournament on t.v in the pubs=loads of pi$$ed up fans/d#*kheads=Plenty of kicking off and people getting hurt.

In hindsight its not these ‘pi$$ed up fans’ fault because we live in a broken and misguided society. You have to dig deeper into the problems of the person who orchestrated this terrible act on Saturday night.

He was probably a victim of a broken society who doesn’t know how to focus his frustrations in the right direction.

Damo preach that bollox to someone else mate it was a chicken sh#t scum bag been clever and attacking a bloke from behind after a night in the pub.
Everyone knows right and wrong and focussing frustrations,broken background etc doesn't wash and is an excuse the pc brigade use to try and justify cowardice acts by Scum.

Up front it looks like this. I refuse to comment further on this until more details are release!

Finally lets hope the victim has a speedy recovery and the aggressor gets the right correction facility.

Police are asking anyone who was in The Skyrack on Saturday evening to check their phones/cameras for photos/videos of crowd scenes and let them have them, presumably not restricted to the event either, they'll want to nail a suspect down to being there at a certain time as they are unlikely to admit being on the premises.

My youngest was in there up to just quarter of an hour before it happened so I'm getting her to check the photos she took - incidently she was later punched on the side of the head in Walkabout by a lad (unknown to her) who was starting a fight with someone else - the someone else ducked and she took the punch as she turned around to see what was happening - has got a lovely shiner for her troubles now.

She was also on a train this morning on her way to college when the window on the opposite side of the aisle to her had a brick thrown through it - its not her week this week is it ?

There is no "broken society" to blame, just an increasing number of brain-dead fookwits - I wish I'd taken up that offer of a place as a Magistrate a few years ago, then again maybe I don't, "The Hanging Magistrate" might not sit too well on my CV.

These brain-dead fookwits came about thanks to a broken society. If it was fixed people would feel no need to take their aggression out on others. I used to see someone all the time randomly attack people a lot littler than himself. What allowed someone to commit such an horrific gesture?

A few brain cells that aren't quite there?

How do you explain Adolf Hitler then?

You're hanging your problems on a phrase.

There is nothing wrong with "society" that a little early discipline wouldn't solve, both in the home and in school, if you don't place controls on kids then they will run out of control, if you don't tell them that its wrong to randomly attack smaller kids in the street then they will not work it out for themselves.

I could be a little sod when I was a kid but I knew my boundaries, both in school (where there were very firm boundaries) and at home, and I knew what was coming if I strayed outside those boundaries - remove those and I would have been "a victim of a broken society", its really very simple, its not a "society" that is to blame for that is too random a concept, too easy to blame something intangible - it starts with parents responsibilities and you work forward from there.


PS - WTF is Adolf Hitler doing on your estate ?

By control you mean suppressing kids from experimenting with actions. Its that suppression of actions that can lead to the trouble causers of tomorrow through curiosity.

For example my old man picked me up from his old estate as a kid and he bumped into one of his mates who he went to school with. Turns out that this mates brother killed somebody. Whilst most of us would poke them red spiders as kids this bloke’s brother probably didn’t and went on to kill someone.

Ever heard of the term wouldn’t harm a fly?

Derek Bird was apparently another gentle giant who had a moment of madness.

Whilst I agree with a majority of your statement because it works for most of us. However there’s a tiny fraction who are the sorry people of this country. Society won’t be fixed until we deal with these people in the correct way.



We’re secretly planning to take over the world again

Not quite.

Nobody suppressed me when I was a kid growing up in LS16 in the 1960s, I had far more freedom that you will ever have dreamed of, did things that you would never think of doing, we didn't even have a phone in the house so no-one could keep a track of us even if they'd wanted to, during the school summer holidays we were locked out of the house at 8am (parents went to work) and didn't get back in until they came home so we ran feral in this area



The difference was that I always knew how far I could push things and when to stop because if I didn't then I'd have my dad to face when I got home, those were my boundaries, within those boundaries were things that included stealing fruit from gardens, stealing stuff from building sites, fighting other gangs around here, all good stuff, but no-one ever found out because it wasn't done to look good or to be boasted about because the last thing you wanted was for word to get home - it was like our own little mafia



So we weren't angels and nothing was perfect but there were rules and respect for police, teachers and parents and with that one control in place came more freedom than you will ever know.