Marland Yarde, who played for Sale Sharks, saw his life ruined by a woman’s false accusations
An ex-Sale Sharks star whose life was ‘ruined’ by a woman who made false allegations against him has spoken of his complete career turn.
Marland Yarde, who played rugby union for England and Sale Sharks, was the victim of a vicious campaign by Sandra Ntonya that left his career in tatters.
Ntonya, from Gorton, first met Yarde on a night out in Manchester shortly after he had left his girlfriend. However, she ended up ringing police and falsely accusing him of raping another woman – which saw him arrested and the centre of a police investigation for five months until prosecutors decided to bring no charges.
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Ntonya ended up arrested herself and convicted of stalking Yarde at Manchester Crown Court in February 2025. She was called an ‘attention-seeking narcissist’ whose behaviour towards Yarde was ‘highly abusive and damaging’ and was eventually jailed in April 2025 for breaching a restraining order against him.
Now, Yarde has spoken about how he has rebuilt his life overseas following the ordeal that effectively derailed his rugby career. The 33-year-old has taken a dramatically different path since walking away from professional rugby, trading the pitch for the classroom as he works towards obtaining his commercial pilot’s licence in Portugal.
Despite his innocence, the ordeal took a profound toll on Yarde, who played for England 13 times. It left him unable to play rugby for a considerable period and feeling as though his life had been placed on hold indefinitely, WalesOnline reports. At Ntonya’s sentencing, the court heard the impact was ‘profound’ on the player, saying that following the allegations his contract was terminated and his mental health suffered.
‘It was very, very tough’
And speaking on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast, Yarde opened up about the harrowing experience and its lasting impact.
“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 explained that the prolonged uncertainty was particularly gruelling, as he repeatedly believed he was on the verge of returning to the sport he loved, only to watch those prospects vanish at the last moment.
“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.”
Yarde ultimately secured a transfer to Bayonne in France’s Top 14. The relocation offered him a chance to rebuild away from the surroundings where his career had fallen apart and, with some distance from those events, he started to see the experience through a different lens.
“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.”
Yarde’s new career
These days, instead of trying to resurrect his rugby career, Yarde is gearing up for life in a completely different field.
He has relocated to Portugal and begun an intensive commercial pilot training programme, something he reveals had captivated him for years.
“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.”
For somebody whose entire adult life had centred around professional sport, returning to the world of education has posed a significant challenge.
Yet Yarde maintains that encountering individuals from diverse backgrounds and nations has also formed a major part of the attraction.
Reflecting 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 relocation signifies considerably more than merely securing another profession following rugby. His playing career concluded in a manner he could hardly have envisioned when he initially emerged onto the professional stage with London Irish, but the former England wing now seems to have discovered a new path forward.
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