Tonga consists of more than 170 islands and is located in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n
It is about 2,600 miles from Melbourne, Australia, and its population of 105,000 could almost squeeze into the stands of the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground.<\/p>\n
The islands are home to a national netball team who have nailed down a top 10 world ranking for the past four years, but it took a meteoric rise to reach this position.<\/p>\n
Sisifa and head coach Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson have travelled thousands of miles to recruit players, securing their star shooter thanks to a persuasive grandma.<\/p>\n
They still face challenges, with their pathway side – below the senior national squad – having to train in a bank’s car park.<\/p>\n
When Sisifa signed up, she found netball in Tonga was little more than a social game.<\/p>\n
She swiftly committed Tonga to entering a team for the 2015 Pacific Games.<\/p>\n
“The scores… we were being beaten like it was a cricket match,” she recalls.<\/p>\n
More like rugby scorelines perhaps – Tonga lost 88-21 to Samoa, and 81-27 to Papua New Guinea.<\/p>\n
Sisifa went to the national governing body for netball in Tonga and said: “Please give me five years.\u202fWe’re going to make some dramatic changes. If it doesn’t work within the five years, I would happily resign.”<\/p>\n
The national body backed Sisifa, so she got to work.<\/p>\n
She needed a coach with international pedigree and so wrote to eight candidates. Only one replied.<\/p>\n
New Zealand-born Pori-Makea-Simpson joined in 2019.<\/p>\n
Sisifa remembers their frank first conversation: “We had no dollar sign to our name. I said if that’s what you’re looking for, Team Tonga is not the place.”<\/p>\n
Then came mention of Tonga’s vision.<\/p>\n
“I said, by 2025, I want Tonga to make top 10 in the world,” Sisifa told BBC World Service.<\/p>\n
Pori-Makea-Simpson recalls: “I went… you’re mad. That is obscene, and I’m not sure you understand what the netball world looks like.”<\/p>\n
Players with Tongan backgrounds were sought, even if they had never visited the country. This led to some backlash, but Pori-Makea-Simpson felt the players she found shared a culture with islanders.<\/p>\n
“Taking them back to Tonga and watching them thrive and grow with their people, it’s been beautiful,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonga consists of more than 170 islands and is located in the South Pacific. It is about 2,600…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-543468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}