Fulham FC captain Tom Cairney has been stung with a fine of more than £7,500 for not paying just £2.92 in car tax to the DVLA.
The Premier League midfielder, 34, was prosecuted for not taxing his Audi when the annual fee came up for renewal last September.
Entering a guilty plea, Cairney wrote: “I just completely forgot I didn’t pay it, so I take responsibility but the car is now fully insured.
“Thanks for your understanding.”
Court papers show tax on the Audi expired on September 19 last year, and the DVLA detected that the vehicle was unlicensed on October 26.
The agency said less than £3 was owed in tax, for the period of just over a month when the vehicle was unlicensed.
When a magistrate sitting in Derby received Cairney’s guilty plea and imposed a criminal conviction, she decided to fine Cairney £7,692 as punishment for the offence.
According to government guidelines, the maximum penalty for keeping a vehicle without a valid licence is £1,000.
Cairney, who played for Hull and Blackburn Rovers before joining Fulham in 2015, has made more than 300 appearances for the west London club.
He was first given the captain’s armband in the 2016/17 season, and has made two international appearances for Scotland. Cairney’s current contract at Fulham is due to expire this summer.
Cairney’s conviction was dealt with last week in the Single Justice Procedure, a controversial fast-track court process where magistrates take decisions behind-closed-doors.
In March last year, the Magistrates Association published its findings of a review of the Single Justice Procedure, calling for reforms along with a 12-point plan for change.
Among the suggested reforms was a requirement for magistrates to explain their decisions when they have departed from the usual sentencing range.
In February, it was revealed a City worker had been fined nearly £40,000 for forgetting to pay around £50 in tax on his Range Rover.
Watford footballer Tom Dele-Bashiru was ordered to pay £5,767.50 for not licensing his car for more than a year.
The club’s legal director submitted a guilty plea on his behalf, saying the footballer was “unaware that his vehicle tax had expired”.
“The defendant has now learned the importance of taxing his vehicle, and has since been instructed on how to properly do so.
“The defendant has been reassuring that this will not happen again and he sincerely apologises for any inconvenience that this may have caused.”
It is understood applications have now been made to the courts for all three cases - against Cairney, Fisher, and Dele-Bashiru - to be looked at again.
“We proactively check for errors and, on the rare occasion these are made, the court can re-open the case to rectify them as quickly as possible”, a HM Courts and Tribunal Service spokesperson said.
Cairney had car troubles in 2020 when he was accused of parking his Lamborghini in a disabled parking space while stopping to pick up a coffee.
In 2022, former Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic revealed he had accidentally smashed Cairney’s car windscreen with a wayward shot in training.
And the following year, Cairney himself took to social media to reveal the same thing had happened again, but Rodrigo Muniz was the culprit this time.
