Maitland, now playing club rugby in England for European champions Saracens, made his Scottish test debut in 2013 and currently boasts 32 caps. Scottish rugby officials formed a liaison in 2005 with Canterbury rugby's International High Performance Unit (IHPU) and sent emerging players to Christchurch from 2005 to 2017 under the John Macphail Scholarship, named after a late former Scottish test hooker. It's not only Scottish players who have benefited from scholarships to Canterbury's IHPU. The last Scottish test player from the Christchurch programme was backrower Adam Ashe, who was in Canterbury in 2014 . Nineteen Scottish players have been to the South Island on 15-week assignments over the past 13 years.

Source: Stuff February 26, 2018 02:03 UTC