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<\/p>\nThe change of career comes less than a year after the international wing announced his retirement from rugby<\/p>\n
Yarde representing the Barbarians in 2022<\/p>\n
Former England wing Marland Yarde has opened up on the false allegations against him that saw him lose everything – and the totally new career he has started away from the UK.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old announced his retirement from rugby last year, having been without a club for two years. Having made his debut for London Irish as a teenager in 2010, Yarde went on to represent Harlequins and Sale Sharks in the English top flight, while he also won 13 international caps.<\/p>\n
However, his career was left in tatters in 2022 when he was arrested in January that year, having been wrongly accused of rape by sex worker Sandra Ntonya, who stalked him for 14 months.<\/p>\n
JOIN OUR WALES RUGBY FACEBOOK PAGE! Latest news, analysis and much more<\/a><\/p>\n While no charges were ever brought against him, and Ntonya later ended up behind bars after breaching a restraining order against him, Yarde was placed under investigation for months and “left in the dark” as his career in England came to a sudden end.<\/p>\n As his relationships with charities also ended and he was referred to as a “rapist” in countless social media by Ntonya, a court heard how the “devastating impact” of the ordeal even saw Yarde contemplate suicide.<\/p>\n The former England international has now opened up on what happened to him, telling The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast<\/a>: “It was very, very tough.<\/p>\n “I obviously knew within myself that I had never done anything wrong, but as an athlete and especially someone who’s basically within the media, you can’t really say anything.<\/p>\n “It lasted a lot longer than I thought it was going to happen. I spent six months just in the dark, it’s almost like I was guilty just via association because there never was a charge, there was nothing.<\/p>\n “I just wanted my life to be back to normal, that was really hard to take. Once something like this happens, say you lose your family, lose your job, lose your income, your character is destroyed – there’s so many different foundations of stuff that just evaporates.<\/p>\n “Everything that I had, your security, your job, where I was living, everything else was just completely eradicated. You still feel in prison in your life.”<\/p>\n “When you lose everything at once, it’s really quite a dark thing,” Yarde added. “There was light at the end of the tunnel because it was done and I was thinking I can back into [rugby] and play at that level, and I speak to a few coaches from different clubs and we’re good, and then it gets blocked in the last second.<\/p>\n “That went on for about six months, and that for me was the hardest part, because I was like even though I am free, I am not really free, because I’m still locked in jail in my own life, and everything else that I had built for so many years.”<\/p>\n Yarde then secured a move to Bayonne in the French Top 14, which allowed him to reset and reflect on the ordeal he had been through. Despite everything, he says he holds no hate in his heart and believes he is actually better for the experience.<\/p>\n “Over that period of time, it was just very, very difficult,” he added. “All I wanted at that stage was just to get back into my game. I wanted to be with my family and I just wanted all this to be like a whole little nightmare.<\/p>\n “But I feel like this allowed me to grow. I obviously needed to hit the the bottom to really appreciate everything that I have in life. I was truly blessed to do what I did and the whole experience and going abroad and playing…. that was one of the best moves I ever did, I absolutely loved it there.<\/p>\n “I wanted to take my life into my own hands and grow as a person, and it made me a better person. It made me appreciate things, protecting your peace, protecting people around you and you start to learn the people who are really there for you.”<\/p>\n Today, Yarde is living in Portugal and has undergone a radical career change, as he targets becoming a commercial pilot.<\/p>\n Having undergone an “intense” and “relentless” training course, the former rugby star says his new pursuit has been hard work but “a revelation”, while he is enjoying life in Portugal.<\/p>\n “I’m living abroad currently,” he said. “I managed to take up a commercial pilot course in Portugal and it’s been a revelation to be honest. It’s something I’ve always been intrigued about wanting to do, so I just took a decision.<\/p>\n “Having a child as well, you start to think a little bit more in the future, so it was uh important. But it’s a lot of hard work and definitely not an easy thing to do.<\/p>\n “I’m doing the integrated ATPR course, it takes roughly two to three years,” Yarde continued. “I’m at the back end of it now. You have to do around 800 hours of classroom, so it’s basically going back to class with people of all different ages from all different parts of the world. You meet some interesting people.<\/p>\n “We do about 26 exams in total and you have a time constraint of 18 months for completing those exams, so it’s quite intense. You’re going to class for probably about eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, and then having to study on top of that.”<\/p>\n On life in Portugal, he added: “It’s very nice. I’ve actually moved a little bit towards the middle now, where the aerodrome is, but I did the ground school<\/a> in a place called Cascais, which is a beautiful part of Portugal.”<\/p>\n Follow all of our channels to ensure you stay up to date with the latest Welsh rugby news. Sign up to our free daily newsletter here<\/a> and our WhatsApp channel here<\/a> for all the breaking news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The change of career comes less than a year after the international wing announced his retirement from rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[7166,5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-521153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-england-rugby-union-team","9":"tag-rugby","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}