WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Sports fans who have a soft spot for underdogs will find few underdoggier teams in Super Rugby than the Dunedin, New Zealand based Highlanders, the southernmost major professional team on the planet.
The Highlanders went 2-1 for the 2025 season when they beat Moana Pasifika on Friday. That record includes a classic underdog win over the Auckland-based Blues, the defending champions and favorites for this year’s title.
The 31-29 win over Moana was in keeping with the trend of the season, high-scoring and close. Nine of 15 matches so far have been decided by five points of less.
The Highlanders are something of an anachronism in modern professional sport for their commitment to building a team primarily from local talent, shunning expensive recruitment. For that reason, they a central part of the life of their home town.
Dunedin is a college town, home to Otago University whose students contribute to the laid back vibe of a city known, for its Scottish roots, as the Edinburgh of the South.
When the Highlanders home ground was Carisbrook, an aging but venerable stadium open to Baltic-like winds, students would bring sofas onto the terraces and burn them during matches.
In the Highlanders’ new enclosed stadium near the university campus, the students are accommodated in an area behind the goalposts known as “the zoo.” When the Highlanders beat the Blues two weeks ago it was orientation week and the Zoo was particularly lively.
Perhaps because of their local hiring policy, the Highlanders often have been a team of characters more than stars. The current Highlanders squad contains only two All Blacks.
Among crowd favorites over the years include Kees Meeuws, a front-rower — similar to a NFL linebacker — whose toughness on the field contrasted with his passion for the part. Or Brendan Laney whose Caledonian roots earned him 20 caps for Scotland. Or Marty Banks, a flyhalf who began his professional career in Siberia and finished in Invercargill, New Zealand’s most southern city.
The Highlanders have played in Super Rugby for 29 years and won it once — in 2015 when they shocked the favored Hurricanes in front of 35,000 fans in Wellington.
The Highlanders were coached then and are coached now by Jamie Joseph whose barrel chest, battered ears and flattened noses speak of his 20 tests in the backrow for New Zealand and 87 matches for Otago province. Between the 2015 final and this season Joseph spent seven years coaching the Japan national team.
“I was coming back to Dunedin, no matter what,” Joseph told the Stuff news website. “Then this opportunity to coach the Highlanders came around.
“It’s a club I love, it’s a club I feel connected to and when given the opportunity to come back and be the head of rugby I thought that was a nice way to look at the club in terms of differences of what it was like when I left.
“But I realized I was a coach not a fish head (official).”
Joseph is a successor to Gordon Hunter — the respected former policeman who coached the Highlanders in their inaugural season in 1996, and died of cancer in 2001 — and whose name is given to the trophy played for between the Highlanders and Blues which the Highlanders regained last weekend.
Joseph kept alive the traditions established by Hunter of physical toughness and of hometown pride. Those qualities where emphasized in the team that Joseph coached to the title.
“I think that’s the blueprint for the teams that I have coached,” he told Stuff. “For every team it all starts up front.
“Sometimes you are blessed with some special players and while the 2015 pack didn’t have any All Blacks, we had a lot of good rugby players and gritty, determined young men who wouldn’t take a step back.”
The Highlanders currently are third out of 11 teams on the Super Rugby title, keeping alive the spirit of the underdog.
AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby
FILE - Japan coach Jamie Joseph watches his players warm up ahead of the Rugby World Cup Pool A game at International Stadium between Japan and Scotland in Yokohama, Japan, Oct. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's photo portrait display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has had references to his two impeachments removed, the latest apparent change at the collection of museums he has accused of bias as he asserts his influence over how official presentations document U.S. history.
The wall text, which summarized Trump's first presidency and noted his 2024 comeback victory, was part of the museum's “American Presidents” exhibition. The description had been placed alongside a photograph of Trump taken during his first term. Now, a different photo appears without any accompanying text block, though the text was available online. Trump was the only president whose display in the gallery, as seen Sunday, did not include any extended text.
The White House did not say whether it sought any changes. Nor did a Smithsonian statement in response to Associated Press questions. But Trump ordered in August that Smithsonian officials review all exhibits before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The Republican administration said the effort would “ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Trump's original “portrait label," as the Smithsonian calls it, notes Trump's Supreme Court nominations and his administration's development of COVID-19 vaccines. That section concludes: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.”
Then the text continues: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837– 1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
Asked about the display, White House spokesman Davis Ingle celebrated the new photograph, which shows Trump, brow furrowed, leaning over his Oval Office desk. Ingle said it ensures Trump's “unmatched aura ... will be felt throughout the halls of the National Portrait Gallery.”
The portrait was taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok, who is credited in the display that includes medallions noting Trump is the 45th and 47th president. Similar numerical medallions appear alongside other presidents' painted portraits that also include the more extended biographical summaries such as what had been part of Trump's display.
Sitting presidents are represented by photographs until their official paintings are commissioned and completed.
Ingle did not answer questions about whether Trump or a White House aide, on his behalf, asked for anything related to the portrait label.
The gallery said in a statement that it had previously rotated two photographs of Trump from its collection before putting up Torok's work.
“The museum is beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring,” the gallery statement said. “For some new exhibitions and displays, the museum has been exploring quotes or tombstone labels, which provide only general information, such as the artist’s name.”
For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal.
And, the gallery statement noted, “The history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”
Trump has made clear his intentions to shape how the federal government documents U.S. history and culture. He has offered an especially harsh assessment of how the Smithsonian and other museums have featured chattel slavery as a seminal variable in the nation's development but also taken steps to reshape how he and his contemporary rivals are depicted.
In the months before his order for a Smithsonian review, he fired the head archivist of the National Archives and said he was firing the National Portrait Gallery's director, Kim Sajet, as part of his overhaul. Sajet maintained the backing of the Smithsonian's governing board, but she ultimately resigned.
At the White House, Trump has designed a notably partisan and subjective “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring gilded photographs of himself and his predecessors — with the exception of Biden, who is represented by an autopen — along with plaques describing their presidencies.
The White House said at the time that Trump himself was a primary author of the plaques. Notably, Trump's two plaques praise the 45th and 47th president as a historically successful figure while those under Biden's autopen stand-in describe the 46th executive as “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”
Barrow reported from Atlanta.
People react to a photograph of President Donald Trump on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Visitors to the National Portrait Gallery walk past the portrait of President Donald Trump, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Visitors stop to look at a photograph of President Donald Trump and a short plaque next to it are on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
A photograph of President Donald Trump and a short plaque next to it are on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Anna Johnson)
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
