Empty cupboards to full hearts - Tonga's remarkable road to Glasgow

Tonga players emerge on to court at the 2023 Netball World Cup

>When Salote Sisifa became CEO of Tonga Netball in 2014, she had a blank canvas. Some would call it an empty cupboard.

>Twelve years and much upheaval later, the Pacific Islanders are ranked eighth in the world. For context, that's just behind Wales and ahead of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

>Tonga launch their first Commonwealth Games netball campaign on Saturday in Glasgow when they face Australia, the world's preeminent team.

>Their story is remarkable. It tells of how TV anchor Sisifa went from reading the news to making the news, changing her country's sporting future.

>It takes in national crises that include a 2022 volcanic eruption of quite staggering force, the destructive tsunami that followed, and the arrival of Covid-19 - almost two years after most of the world was first hit - to hamper relief efforts.

>Sisifa said she would resign if she failed as CEO. She's still firmly at the helm.

>Coach Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson (pictured) has helped CEO Salote Sisifa guide Tonga on their ascent of the world game

>Tonga consists of more than 170 islands and is located in the South Pacific.

>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.

>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.

>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.

>They still face challenges, with their pathway side - below the senior national squad - having to train in a bank's car park.

>When Sisifa signed up, she found netball in Tonga was little more than a social game.

>She swiftly committed Tonga to entering a team for the 2015 Pacific Games.

>"The scores... we were being beaten like it was a cricket match," she recalls.

>More like rugby scorelines perhaps - Tonga lost 88-21 to Samoa, and 81-27 to Papua New Guinea.

>Sisifa went to the national governing body for netball in Tonga and said: "Please give me five years. We're going to make some dramatic changes. If it doesn't work within the five years, I would happily resign."

>The national body backed Sisifa, so she got to work.

>She needed a coach with international pedigree and so wrote to eight candidates. Only one replied.

>New Zealand-born Pori-Makea-Simpson joined in 2019.

>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."

>"I said, by 2025, I want Tonga to make top 10 in the world," Sisifa told BBC World Service.

>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."

>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.

>"Taking them back to Tonga and watching them thrive and grow with their people, it's been beautiful," she said.

>The spirit of Tala: The rapid rise of Tonga's netball team

>Uneeq Palavi, also known as Pav, has a Samoan mother and Tongan father. She grew up in Australia and has been a Melbourne Mavericks fan favourite.

>In 2019, she initially ignored Tonga's call, not feeling ready.

>Sisifa roped in Palavi's Tongan grandmother to apply a little persuasion. It worked.

>Tonga won silver at the Pacific Games and jumped from 42nd to 19th in the world.

>They were moving in the right direction, but then came problem upon problem: a volcanic eruption, tsunami and pandemic lockdown all struck in early 2022.

>When the underwater Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Haʻapai erupted, it resulted in the biggest atmospheric explosion recorded by modern instrumentation.

>Nasa said it was hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

>Four people in Tonga died, and devastation from the eruption and subsequent tsunami was vast. For a while, communication with the island was difficult.

>Pori-Makea-Simpson, who was out of the country, had to lead without Tonga Netball's support.

>"I had no team, no administration, I didn't have uniforms, I had no equipment," she says.

>She had an upcoming PacificAus Sports series and had to draw together a squad almost from scratch, searching social media for eligible players.

>Most had never met before they gathered at Sydney Airport five days before competition began.

>"I didn't even know their names. They didn't know each other's names. Even when we had finished the tournament, I still didn't know everybody's surnames," Pori-Makea-Simpson recalls.

>Uneeq Palavi wasn't sure she was ready for international netball when Tonga first got in touch

>Star shooter Palavi speaks of a cultural bond.

>"Playing for Tonga is always like playing with 15 of my other sisters," she said.

>Next came a rare World Cup appearance in 2023, with the team taking on the nickname of Tala - a rare bird that is a symbol of hope.

>They finished eighth in South Africa and now comes a Commonwealth Games debut.

>Team spirit, and considerable talent, have taken this team a long way.

>"I think non-Pacific Island people would call it a camaraderie. It's not a camaraderie. It's an innate spirituality that connects them," says coach Pori-Makea-Simpson.

>"In a way that is very, very hard to understand from the outside. You can feel it from the people in the crowd.

>"Irrespective of what happens to us in terms of scoreboard, their pride and gratitude to us wearing their crest and their flag will never falter.

>"And they're not proud of us because we're winning. They're proud of us because we're Tongan. I am probably the proudest non-Tongan walking on the planet."

>Team spirit has taken Tonga a long way in a short space of time

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