Bankrupt England rugby legend Lawrence Dallaglio finds love with thriller girl after bitter divorce – and strikes into modest £2,750 monthly rented property after promoting marital residence for £2.4million

Rugby legend Lawrence Dallaglio has made big changes as he tackles the challenge of getting his life back on track after being declared bankrupt in the wake of a bitter divorce ruck – and found new love.

The Daily Mail can reveal the former England captain has set up home with a mystery brunette who has been helping him get back on his feet after a series of devastating blows.

Neighbours told how Dallaglio, 53, has been quietly piecing his life back together as he and his new partner settle into a recently refurbished rented house in a residential street near St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Unsurprisingly, in the face of his financial woes, Dallaglio has been forced to downsize his lifestyle – and it now seems he has found a place to live to match.

The detached house – which is squeezed into a plot between two larger properties on each side – has four bedrooms and Dallaglio is renting it for £2,750-a-month.

As he begins to find his feet again, there’s also been another welcome addition to Dallaglio’s new set up – an adorable golden retriever puppy called Ziggy who has his own TikTok account.

One recent video features Dallaglio taking the pup for a walk with a caption saying: ‘Your owner won a rugby World Cup and now you think you’re famous too.’

Ziggy was also on hand as Dallaglio and his new partner were photographed for the first time together.

The trio headed to a local garden centre where they spent an hour in the cafe before picking up provisions then returning home.

Onlookers told how the 6ft 4ins former athlete, who weighed 17 stone at the height of his career, appeared relaxed in a baggy jumper, a blue jacket and blue jeans and seems to have entered a more ‘comfortable phase’ in his physical appearance.

A neighbour said Dallaglio had been living in the home for the last nine months.

He said: ‘Lawrence moved in with his partner in May. It was a bit of a surprise when he first arrived because he’s this huge World Cup winning rugby legend.

‘But they’ve both really ingratiated themselves well with the neighbours. They’ve been round to a few houses for dinner.

‘Lawrence always looks relaxed and happy, he’s got a new puppy, a beautiful dog. I’ve seen him out on walks a few times.

‘I always have a chat with him when I see him, he’s a really nice down-to-earth bloke.’

Once a giant of his sport, Dallaglio earned 85 caps playing for England – including 22 as captain – and was a key member of the 2003 World Cup winning squad.

He went on to enjoy the trappings of fame and fortune and set up home in an ‘idyllic’ four bedroomed property in leafy Richmond, Surrey, which he bought as his playing career was riding high.

Dallaglio lived there for nearly 25 years with former model wife Alice, 52, and their three children.

During that time the rugby ace reached the pinnacle of the game – while his sometimes turbulent life off the pitch saw him caught up in cheating, drugs and brothel party scandals.

The couple had weathered a series of storms – with Alice also at one point facing allegations of an affair.

But it all unravelled when the couple’s marriage finally collapsed – along with Dallaglio’s sports company.

It ended with Dallaglio being forced into selling their family home for £2.4 million last May – after it had originally gone on the market for £3.3 million months earlier.

The day after the sale, Dallaglio was declared bankrupt and was ordered to hand over his share of the proceeds to pay off an overdrawn directors loan of more than £366,500.

A further review of his debts revealed Dallaglio owed a total of £423,570 while he faced further liabilities of more than £60,000 to pay to liquidators, according to documents published by Companies House last December.

Despite his financial woes, Dallaglio has managed to keep his charity – Dallaglio RugbyWorks – afloat.

The revelations came days before he was left reeling by the death of his beloved father Vincenzo, 91.

In a Christmas Day posting on social media, Dallaglio announced his Italian-born father had died following a long battle with dementia.

In a further message days later, Dallaglio posted an image of himself with Ziggy nestling into a dog sling accompanied by a caption saying: ‘A difficult start to the year. Keeping things steady.’

It was the latest devastating blow for Dallaglio – whose mother Eileen died from cancer aged 70 in December 2008.

It was the death of his older sister Francesca in the Marchioness riverboat disaster in 1989 that he has credited with inspiring him to make something of his life.

At 19 Francesca – a trainee ballerina who had performed for Princess Diana – was the youngest of the 51 victims who died after two boats collided on the River Thames in London.

Dallaglio – who was brought up a Roman Catholic – was 16 at the time and a boarder at Ampleforth public school in North Yorkshire.

The tragedy happened during the summer holidays and Dallaglio had also been invited to attend the party that night but declined because of a headache.

After setting his sights on rugby, Dallaglio enjoyed a glittering career. Along with his World Cup triumph he won five Premiership titles and two Heineken Cups in the all-conquering Wasps teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

But controversy was never far away – even after he settled down with Alice who met Dallaglio in 1992 when he was still trying to make his mark in the game.

The couple – who bought their Richmond home for £925,000 in 2001 – went on to tie the knot in a romantic ceremony at Lake Como in 2005.

Despite his success in the game, it was off the field that Dallaglio famously dropped the ball on a number of occasions.

The couple’s marriage survived a succession of scandals dating back to the late Nineties when allegations of wild partying emerged, while Alice was at home looking after their young children.

In 1999, Dallaglio was stripped of the England captaincy after he allegedly confessed he had used prostitutes in Amsterdam, and was accused of using and dealing cocaine and ecstasy.

He told an undercover newspaper reporter he had been a teenage drug dealer and reportedly added: ‘I made big, big money from dealing in drugs.

‘Why do you think I know so much about drugs? I was surrounded by it. I used to drive from one end of London to the other with five or six ounces of it (cocaine).

‘That’s how I used to make money before I took up rugby.’

Dallaglio also allegedly boasted how he and two other players had taken ecstasy ‘and then a couple of wraps of coke’ to celebrate winning the 1997 Lions series in South Africa.

At the time, Dallaglio claimed he had been ‘naive and foolish’ but admitted he had experimented with drugs in his late teens.

He said he was now ‘completely against drugs’, adding: ‘I will always regret the effect that this has had on everyone.’

The incident led to him being fined £15,000 for bringing the game into disrepute on top of legal costs amounting to £10,000.

Later, Dallaglio was in more hot water after he allegedly slept with a married mother, leading to the woman divorcing her husband.

In 2005 the couple’s relationship hit a rocky patch and Alice reportedly had a fling with millionaire property developer Leon Butler.

The revelations came after Dallaglio revealed in March 2005 that he and Alice were on a ‘trial separation’ following claims that she was fed up with his rugby commitments taking him away from home for months at a time, and was running out of patience over their failure to marry.

Dallaglio played down their separation at the time, saying: ‘We want to make it work. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not splitting for good.’

He added: ‘Like any couple with young children, we are determined to make our relationship work.’

And they appeared to do just that after tying the knot later that year.

Dalliglio retired from rugby three years later and set up his own charity while working in TV and radio punditry and as an after-dinner speaker.

Already an MBE, he was also awarded an OBE in 2008 for his contribution to sport and charity.

But, in 2020, Dallaglio found himself caught up in another sleazy scenario when a court heard he made ‘payments of up to £10,000 at a brothel’ in Holborn, which also offered clients cocaine.

Wood Green Crown Court was told undercover police raided a Georgian townhouse in July 2019 where a gang were running a vice operation supplying £300-an-hour prostitutes along with Class A drugs.

Using evidence from card machines found in a secret compartment in a basement lavatory, prosecutors compiled a spreadsheet of payments made at the address.

They included four from Dallaglio’s account on March 22, 2019, amounting to a total of £10,500.

One of the transactions, for £7,550, was paid into the account of one of the defendants, a Romanian madam aged 22.

Dallaglio was interviewed under caution but was not arrested and did not give evidence in the case.

Despite his controversies, Dallaglio insisted that he had never been happier than the time spent at his Richmond home with his family.

He once told how he would end his ‘fantasy 24 hours’ drinking champagne with Alice there.

The couple often hosted dinner parties at the house where Dallaglio – author of My Italian Family Cookbook – would rustle up dishes inspired by his father.

But there was more trouble ahead in May 2023 when HMRC filed a bankruptcy petition against Dallaglio.

Dallaglio narrowly avoided going bust after he was given more time by a judge to clear a £700,000 tax bill.

During proceedings his financial woes were laid bare after it was revealed his sports business, which he set up the year he became England captain in 1997, owed cash to a string of creditors.

To prevent the firm being wound up by a court order, Dallaglio agreed to an ‘individual voluntary agreement’ to pay off his debts.

But in 2024 a report into his financial affairs stated Dallaglio was still being chased for hundreds of thousands of pounds in loans.

The couple were forced to put their home on the market and it was bought by Brentford defender Jayden Meghoma, 19, who has represented England at Under 19 level and is currently on loan with Scottish giants Rangers.

Land registry details show Meghoma paid £2.7 million for the property and has taken out a mortgage for £2.43 million with upmarket bank Coutts, whose clients include King Charles.

While apparently making a healthy profit on the sale of the property, it emerged during the insolvency court hearing that the equity in the home was only around £1.2million.

The hearing was triggered after Alice sought an ‘urgent’ order allowing the immediate sale of the house.

Alice, who was represented by separate lawyers from her husband, was said to have done so in the hope of staving off the imminent threat of Dallaglio’s financial ruin.

While the sale went through, the bid failed and Dallaglio was declared bankrupt after one of his creditors secured the order.

As the couple’s marriage collapsed, Alice’s artist mother Lydia Corbett – who was said to have been Pablo Picasso’s last muse – told how Dallaglio’s troubles were at the heart of the split.

She told MailOnline: ‘I’m very sad about it. People marry and they divorce, I’ve been divorced twice so I know what it’s like. It’s horrible, it’s painful for the heart and it’s not fair.

‘He did very well, I loved him, but he’s going through a bad phase and we hope he’s alright.’