Manchester United defender Harry Maguire has been banned from driving and ordered to pay more than £1,000 after he was caught speeding near Manchester Airport.
The 31-year-old was caught by a speed camera driving at 85mph on a 50mph stretch of Wilmslow Road in his £200,000 Range Rover at 2pm on March 5, 2024.
Maguire was not present at Bolton Magistrates’ Court today (Wednesday, January 8) when magistrates handed out a ‘discretionary’ 56 day driving ban. They also fined him £666, ordered him to pay £120 prosecution costs and a £266 victim surcharge.
Prosecutor Karen Allanson told the court Maguire had confirmed in correspondence he was the driver of the Range Rover and pleaded guilty to speeding at a previous hearing on October 2 last year.
Gwyn Lewis, defending, apologised to the court for his client’s absence. He said he client ‘didn’t mean any disrespect’ but that his lawyer was entitled to represent the defendant in court in his absence. He said his client was a footballer and a ‘public figure’.
Maguire was captured by a speed camera on a section of Wilmslow Road where it emerges from under a runway at Manchester Airport where there were no pedestrians, said Mr Lewis.
The lawyer said his client currently had three points on his licence but had been caught speeding three times in four years.
The footballer was also caught speeding three days after the Wilmslow Road offence, this time in in his home city of Sheffield. For the Sheffield speeding matter, Maguire was ordered by another court to pay more than £1,200 after the same 8 speed automatic vehicle, which can go 0-60mph in 5.8 seconds, was clocked doing 68mph in a 60mph zone on the A616.
Mr Lewis told Bolton magistrates his client his client accepted he was driving ‘too fast’ and was going to receive a ban. But he asked the court to accept that for a previous speeding matter his client was offered a speeding awareness course instead of penalty points but he was ‘away from the country’ at the time the course was scheduled so he had to accept the points.
The chairman of the bench Mark Hardman said: “We’ve listened to what’s been said and looked carefully at the speeding and the area where the speeding was taking place. In this case we are prepared to exercise our discretion due to Mr Maguire being out of the country and not being able to take part in the speeding course.”
If the magistrates had decided to hand Maguire six penalty points instead of a discretionary ban of 56 days, he could have faced a longer ban.