Background
Sean Maitland was born in Tokoroa, New Zealand on 14 September 1988. Sean is half-Scottish and is of Samoan and Maori descent from his mother"s side.
Sean Maitland was born in Tokoroa, New Zealand on 14 September 1988. Sean is half-Scottish and is of Samoan and Maori descent from his mother"s side.
Sean attended Hamilton Boys" High School where he played in the first XV and competed in athletics, recording a personal best of 11.29 and 22.30 seconds for the 100m and 200m respectively, and threw the discus 45.47m.
He plays for London Irish in the English Premiership. He is the cousin of New Zealand born, Australian Rugby Union Player Quade Cooper. Sean scored four tries against teams from Argentina, Ireland and Wales.
Maitland debuted for Canterbury in 2006, and made his Super Rugby debut for the Crusaders against the ACT Brumbies in 2008 and played in every Crusaders match that year.
In 2010, he was selected for the New Zealand Maori where he impressed, scoring a try against Ireland. On 11 March 2011 he scored four tries in a game against the Brumbies, equaling the record for the most tries scored in a Super Rugby match.
On 30 April 2013, Maitland was announced in the British and Irish Lions squad for the tour of Australia later that year. The tour marked a possible first encounter with cousin Quade Cooper in the test arena, having played one another before at Super Rugby level
The two never met in-game as Cooper was controversially left out of the extended Wallaby squad for the series, and Maitland never took to the field in the one test that he was on the bench.
Maitland was not selected in the team to play the Queensland Reds mid-week game, in which Cooper captained the Reds for the first time. Maitland played in the Rugby World Cup 2015, in which Scotland reached the quarter-finals. He was controversially sin binned for a supposed deliberate knock-on in the quarter-finals.
Scotland eventually went on to lose the match 35–34, ending their Rugby World Cup.
Quotations: "My granddad always reminded me that I was part Scottish and that I should never forget that.".
Maitland spent 2005 and 2006 in the New Zealand Schools team and was a member of New Zealand under-19 World Cup winning side in 2007 and the New Zealand under-20 side in 2008 winning the Institutional Review Board Junior World Championship.
