Roger Franklin: Sad, mad end to a life

There is nothing funny about violent death, a fact that makes David McFadyen's murder a matter of considerable guilt - and not just for the 21-year-old Geelong man who was convicted on Wednesday of beating him into a comatose pulp.

There is no doubt that the attack went beyond brutal; the list of McFadyen's injuries almost turns the stomach. His facial bones were pulverised by fists, feet and a barrage of head butts. Across his face was a near-perfect imprint of the sole of his attacker's sneaker.

And yet, right up until the moment when killer caught up with victim on a grassy median strip beside Geelong's Eastern Beach, the events of that warm and windy Wednesday night in October, 2006, were tragedy writ as farce.

McFadyen's last hours are a reckoning of improbably stupid actions.

Ridiculous machismo and knuckle-dragging bogan thuggery, a petty insult avenged to bloody absurdity -- that is what this story is about.

The jury took less than a day to convict baby-faced Nicholas Strain, 22, who wept when the verdict was announced.