True Yorkshire grit of the OTHER Harry
Quiet hero with A* GCSEs was under rated — until that bullet-like header
When a callow newcomer ambled awkwardly into the changing room at england’s Staffordshire HQ for his first international training session last summer, the jaws of more established stars dropped in disbelief.
While they carried their kit in snazzy designer holdalls, harry Maguire had brought his still-muddy boots and shinguards in a black plastic bin-liner, casually slung over his brawny shoulder.
A photo of his no-frills, Sunday league-style entrance went viral, endearing him to grassroots fans, who then still felt deeply out of touch with england’s pampered stars (though it didn’t please his mother Zoe, a house-proud Yorkshire hairdresser, who ticked him off for looking so scruffy).
The plastic bag typified Maguire’s laidback outlook on life. For this 6ft 4in colossus, who set our hearts racing with that bullet-headed first goal in Saturday’s thrilling World Cup quarter-final victory over Sweden, is no Flash harry.
In fact, he is possibly one of the most unaffected, humble, grounded blokes ever to pull on a Three Lions jersey.
here is a £4million-a-year Premier League footballer who still buys terrace tickets to watch Sheffield United, the home-city team he once played for, and has supported since boyhood. A player whose patriotism (witness his vein-bulging celebration after netting that goal on Saturday) and boyish passion for the game is such that, in 2016, he travelled to France for the european Championships – not as a member of the england team, but as a supporter, with a group of mates.
he may have the obligatory nice house and car these days, and enjoys exotic holidays with his beautiful fiancee Fern hawkins – a 23-year-old physiotherapy graduate to whom he proposed during a romantic break in Paris last February after a seven-year courtship.
Yet in all other ways, Maguire – whose playing style combines the elegance of Bobby Moore with the brute-strength of Big Jack Charlton – is a throwback to the england heroes of 1966. There is even something old-fashioned about his selfdeprecating manner of speech and his surprisingly gentle South Yorkshire brogue. Yesterday, his former youth coach, John Pemberton, described him to me as ‘a levelheaded, ordinary Sheffield lad, from a really supportive background’ but also remarked on his extraordinary ‘presence’.
Another generation would doubtless deem lantern-jawed harry as just the type you would want beside you in the trenches.
he was already a role model for pupils at his old school, St Mary’s Catholic high in Chesterfield, long before the World Cup. Photos of him in england attire are showcased in the corridors, and he often returns to give motivational talks, coach and help raise money for charity. (his sister Daisy, 17, is still a pupil there, but has been given time off to watch him in Russia).
now, although he has played just ten games for england, and only turned 25 in March, the Leicester City centre-back has, in his undemonstrative way, also become a talisman for england.
The team’s unimagined success is based on the rock-like defensive partnership he forms with fellow Yorkshiremen Kyle Walker, also of Sheffield, and John Stones, born in Barnsley. A backbone to the team as rugged and formidable as the Pennines. Before this magical World Cup, however, Maguire was hardly a household name. Indeed, few non-football fans would have heard of him, and only a few months ago it seemed unlikely Gareth Southgate would pick him ahead of players from more glamorous clubs.
THIS, after all, a player who, at 15 was a little on the chubby side – as we can see from a recently- emerged photo of him losing a school 400m race (pictured) – and whose career meandered through Sheffield, hull and Wigan before Leicester City bought him a year ago, for £17million. So how has he emerged as one of the tournament’s true superstars?
his is a story of steel and grit. he and his brothers, Joe, 27, and Laurence, 21, were encouraged to play by their father, Alan Maguire, 51, who played semi-professionally working his way up in the Co-operative Insurance Society. he is now a financial services director.
‘We were football mad in the house,’ Maguire has said, describing how he and his brothers would scrap for the ball in the garden. ‘I don’t know how mum coped at times. I’m sure there were plenty of broken windows’. his father also ‘used to go mad’ because they churned up the lawn. Joe Maguire became a part-time footballer. Laurence plays for Chesterfield, who were relegated from the Football League last season (last weekend the club amusingly explained his absence from a pre-season friendly by saying he had ‘a bout of Russian flu’). They are attending the World Cup with a large contingent of family and friends, including Fern, who wears harry’s white number 6 shirt, and Daisy, who yesterday tweeted a picture of them with her brother after the Sweden match. Watching him score had been ‘the best feeling ever,’ she declared.
Maguire was a bright lad and passed eight GCSes, with four A*s. had he not become a footballer, he says he would have studied A-levels, with maths his first choice. Certainly, during his early years at St Mary’s, some teachers thought he would have been wiser to follow an academic path.
‘When he first joined us, at 11, you could see he was one of our good players, but did I think he’d be playing in a World Cup quarter final? Absolutely not,’ says Martin McKee, head of Pe at the school, which claims some credit for the Corinthian spirit with which Maguire plays, because it places great emphasis on good sportsmanship and correct behaviour.
As he honed his strength and skill in those garden games, wearing england shirts bearing the names of idols such as John Terry and Rio Ferdinand (who described his performance against Sweden as ‘immense’) Maguire set his heart on emulating them.
After a brief spell at Barnsley FC’s junior academy, he joined Sheffield United, where, by 18, he had broken into the first team. Travis Binnion, director of its youth academy, whose prodigies are sent on work experience in places such as asphalt works to toughen them up, believes Maguire’s time there was character-forming. ‘It’s a working- class city and doesn’t tolerate bigtime Charlies. The fans demand effort and endeavour,’ he said. ‘As a kid, he was very confident on the pitch, but off it he was down-to-earth and quite reserved. he had the air that he knew best, but not in a big-headed way. he would listen, but he would back his ability to know the game, and he was very bright. You could see the cogs ticking in his head.’ Ah yes, that head. It might contain plenty of grey matter, but it propels the ball with such thunderous velocity that teammate Jamie Vardy has nicknamed him ‘Slab-head’. Maguire will doubtless take the ribbing in good part, for nothing seems to faze him. As he says: ‘I try to keep my feet on the floor, stay humble, and let my ability do the talking.’ It has certainly spoken eloquently this past fortnight. ‘Cry God for harry, england and St George!’ is no longer a chant that belongs solely to captain harry Kane. Maguire’s performances have been so outstanding that fans of clubs such as Manchester United are now begging their owners to buy him, whatever the price. If he does finally join some big name club when this glorious World Cup idyll is over, he’d better splash out on a new kit-bag or his mother will slaughter him.