The retrial of four men convicted of brutally attacking footballer Robbie Hughes has been postponed for nearly a year. 

The former Croydon Athletic and Sutton United player, 34, will be forced to wait until September 2015 to return to court after a last-minute postponement caused by a lawyers' strike in Greece. 

The trial, which had been delayed once before, was scheduled to begin yesterday in Crete, the island on which Mr Hughes was beaten into a coma in a viscious assault outside a nightclub in June 2008.

He spent three months in a Greek hospital and underwent three brain operations following the attack, which has left him with permanent brain damage.

His mother, Maggie Hughes, described the fresh delay as "a slap in the face".

Your Local Guardian: Robbie Hughes and his mother Maggie

Maggie Hughes with son Robbie

The wasted trip cost her family and witnesses £8,000 in travel and accommodation.

She said: "I’m totally worn out.

“There’s been no rush to get this case sorted and it will be seven-and-a-half years after the incident when the trial finally happens.

“This is not justice, it’s a slap in the face against the victim’s family.”

Mr Hughes, who lives in South Croydon, travelled to court along with his mother and prosecution witnesses.

But the defendents and their lawyers did not turn up amid three days of industrial action to protest Greek legal changes.

Curtis Taylor, Daniel Bell, Sean Branton and Joseph Bruckland, all from Surrey, were convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and given suspended jail terms in 2012.

But they appealed and were due to begin a retrial in November last year, only for it to be delayed because of their lawyers’ workload.