A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the “brutal murder” of a 44-year-old father of five who was beaten to death with a golf club.Alex Deady of Glenview, Convent Road, Doneraile, Co Cork, had denied the murder but admitted the manslaughter of Barry Daly at Rockview Terrace, Doneraile, on October 12th last year. A jury at the Central Criminal Court found him guilty of murder after deliberating for almost 12 hours.On Monday at the Central Criminal Court in Cork, Judge Siobhan Lankford imposed on Deady the mandatory life sentence for murder. She said his actions in taking Daly’s life were “not very prolonged but were brutal” and noted the killing’s impact on many lives.She said the murder was not just a huge tragedy for the family of the deceased, who had lost a loved one, but also for the families of Deady and two juveniles convicted of murder and manslaughter, and for the entire community of Doneraile, which was also greatly affected.The judge recalled the victim impact statement of Daly’s partner Katie O’Reilly, in which she spoke about how Daly was her soul mate and said they had been inseparable. She had said “he was not just my partner, he was my best friend, my safety and my home”.The judge also recalled other victim impact testimony where she heard that Daly was a kind and caring member of the community who, in his work as a postman, particularly looked out for elderly people living alone as he was often their only contact with other people during the week.The jury heard the murder happened after Daly had either accidentally or intentionally struck Deady’s girlfriend Rachel O’Kelly during a row as locals celebrated Doneraile winning the North Cork Junior B hurling title. Deady and two juveniles armed themselves with golf clubs and followed him home.O’Reilly had testified during the trial how she was lying in bed when she heard a voice outside saying “I’m going to kill you”. She heard her partner shout “stop” before she heard somebody getting “a whack of something” and she went out to her front door, where she found Daly lying on the ground.“There was blood everywhere, I checked for a pulse. I knew he was dead. I was screaming at my mother to ring an ambulance. Blood was coming out of his ears, his mouth, his nose, [there was] blood everywhere. The back of his head was smashed.”Assistant state pathologist Dr Margot Bolster said Daly’s jaw had been broken into fragments and dislocated, which she believed was caused by “severe blows”, which in turn led to him inhaling blood into his lungs and he could not get air in.Afterwards Deady, whose DNA was found on a golf club that also bore Daly’s DNA, was heard on CCTV telling the two juveniles that while he may have suffered injuries to his own face during the earlier fracas, he believed his injuries were nothing compared with those suffered by Daly.Deady told gardaí at interview that “it was a tip, it wasn’t a big swing. I did not mean to kill him. I am so sorry for it. When I left, [Daly] was talking.”Deady apologised in a letter to Daly’s family after conviction.The judge noted that a probation report found that Deady did not accept the jury’s verdict even though he accepted he caused Daly’s death. “It is the issue of intention that he disputes,” she said as she sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder. The judge commended the Garda investigation conducted by Det Insp John O’Connell and his team, who were under tremendous pressure because one of the juveniles was about to turn 18, before she extended her sympathies to the Daly and O’Reilly families on their huge loss.Lankford adjourned sentencing on the two juveniles for murder and manslaughter until September 11th and remanded both in detention until then.