A British court has overturned the rape conviction of former Premier League player Ched Evans and ordered a new trial.

The decision was announced Thursday by the Court of Appeal in London.

Evans, a former Sheffield United and Wales striker, was in the packed London courtroom with his girlfriend when the verdict was read out.

The 27-year-old Evans was convicted in April 2012 of raping a 19-year-old woman at a hotel in Rhyl, north Wales.

He was released from prison last year after serving half of his five-year sentence.

Evans had always maintained his innocence and took his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Evans had been linked to a move to Maltese football club Hibernians, but attempts were quashed after the British government stepped in to prevent him plying his trade overseas.

The intervention by the Ministry of Justice followed an announcement by the Maltese side Hibernians that they had offered the former Sheffield United forward a deal for the remainder of the 2014-2015 season.

As speculation mounted that the 26-year-old was preparing to rehabilitate his career on the Mediterranean island, the MoJ issued a statement clarifying that, as a convicted sex offender on licence, Evans was barred from working abroad, the Guardian had reported at the time.

Evans’s latest apparent attempt to get back into football was – even before the MoJ’s statement – however shrouded in mystery, with the striker’s spokesperson dismissing the Maltese link as fabricated just hours after Hibernians officials confirmed they had offered him a deal and that supporters were “waiting for him minute by minute to come here”.