Former England international Marland Yarde has rebuilt his life abroad after an ordeal that left his rugby career in tatters. He is now close to becoming a commercial pilot.
Yarde, now 33, has taken a dramatically different path since walking away from professional rugby, having swapped the pitch for the classroom as he works towards gaining his commercial pilot's licence in Portugal.
It is a remarkable new chapter for a player who once looked destined for a long England career.
Career derailed by false allegation
Yarde made his professional debut for London Irish as a teenager in 2010 and went on to play for Harlequins and Sale Sharks in the English Premiership, while earning 13 England caps.
But his career changed dramatically in 2022 after he was arrested following a false rape allegation made against him by sex worker Sandra Ntonya, who had stalked him for 14 months.
No charges were ever brought against Yarde. Ntonya was later jailed after breaching a restraining order against him.
The ordeal nevertheless had a profound impact on Yarde, who found himself unable to play rugby for an extended period and said he felt as though his life had effectively been put on hold.
Speaking out about the ordeal
Speaking on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast, Yarde previously opened up about the experience and the effect it had on him.
"It was very, very tough. 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Yarde said the uncertainty was particularly difficult because he believed he could return to the sport he loved, only to repeatedly see opportunities disappear.
"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."
"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."
New start in France and Portugal
Eventually, Yarde secured a move to Bayonne in France's Top 14.
The move gave him an opportunity to start again away from the environment in which his career had unravelled and, with distance from what had happened, he began to view the experience differently.
"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."
"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."
"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."
Now, rather than attempting to revive his rugby career, Yarde is preparing for life in an entirely different profession.
He has moved to Portugal and embarked on an intensive commercial pilot training course, something he says had long interested him.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Embracing a new direction
For someone whose adult life had revolved around professional sport, the transition back into education has been a considerable challenge.
But Yarde says the experience of meeting people from different backgrounds and countries has also been part of the appeal.
On his life there, he said: "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] in a place called Cascais, which is a beautiful part of Portugal."
For Yarde, the move represents far more than simply finding another career after rugby.
His playing days ended in circumstances he could scarcely have imagined when he first burst onto the professional scene with London Irish, but the former England wing now appears to have found a fresh direction.
