By Katalina Siasau

Rising star, the Tonga Tala, Tonga’s national netball team plans to push up its no. 8 ranking in the top ten world netball teams, in their international competitions in 2024 - the beginning of the four year cycle until the next World Cup.

The Tonga Tala’s rise to fame in the Pacific and success on the world netball stage has been remarkable. The Tala are currently ranked number eight in the world. The team has held the PacificAus Netball series championship title three times in a row, and the gold medalist of the Sol2023 Pacific Games.

Tala Head Coach Jaqua Pori-Makea Simpson, in Tonga this week, said they would continue to keep striving, and push over their current rank, “I think sixth is a place for Tala to sit at," she said.

"The girls’ journey is a remarkable achievement, given that they are not full-time athletes, but went from being underdogs, to the top ten in the world," she said, during a presentation she hosted with Tonga Netball Association CEO Salote Sisifa, among key stakeholders, on 11 March, at Tanoa Hotel in Nuku'alofa.

Champions

In 2022, Tonga Tala had no world ranking and it was a struggle for Tonga Netball to compete internationally. Things took a turn for the better when Tala bagged the Championship of the 2022 Pacific Australia Netball Series in March 2022, in Sydney, Australia, their first game.

Jaqua said she scouted social media and the netball pathway, trying to find young Tongans. The team, who met merely five days before they competed, went through the PacificAus Sports series undefeated. The series brought together the national teams of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, and an invitee Singapore. Fiji Pearls were the highest ranked team coming into the series, however, Tonga walked away with an eight-goal grand final win over Fiji, and the title “Champion of the 2022 Pacific Australia Netball Series”.

“Everybody thought it was a fluke," said the head coach. 
Then, the Tala competed at the World Cup Qualifiers in July 2022, in Fiji, surprising fans with three thrilling consecutive wins.


They played Samoa in their first opening match, beating them 69-52. 
The next day, they played Fiji, held them off by 30 points, 59-29. The team continued its winning streak, with a massive win against Papua New Guinea 89-28. Cook Islands came the closest to winning against the team, however ,it was a 70-43 victory for the Tala's final game in Fiji. 
“This was a really pinnacle moment for us,” Jaqua said.

Tonga Tala continued on to the PacificAus Sports series on the Sunshine Coast, in October 2022, where the victorious team defeated Samoa's Tifa Moana 69-43 in the grand final, on 21 October. The team went into this grand final undefeated in all of its match rounds. They defeated the Fiji Pearls 74-55, Papua New Guinea Pepes 83-45, USC Thunder 59-39, and the Australian Pathway Team 57-46.

Coach 
Jaqua said the pressure was rising but the hardest thing for them to do was to keep winning.

In April 2023, the team went into their third PacificAus Sports at Gold Coast, Australia. Tonga Tala took over Malawi to win the PacificAus Sports Netball Series 2023 on 29 April. Tonga claimed its third PacificAus Sports Netball Series title, winning all of its matches by defeating Fiji 68-52, Samoa 79-53, Singapore 85-40, Kenya 71-44 and Zambia 59-47.

Tonga Tala made their world debut at the Netball World Cup at Cape Town, South Africa, on July 2023, at the peak of their success.


“The world cup for us was a challenge because we were about to be tested against nations that we have never faced before," said the head coach. "There were a lot of talks through Europe about whether the team deserved to be where they were in the world , because they hadn’t played anybody else aside from Pacific nations, along with some other African nations."

"
We were winning games to push our ranking up but we hadn’t really been tested before."

However, an epic win against the Scottish Thistles (55-47), pushed Tonga Tala further on the top ten list.

At the recent 2023 Pacific Games in Solomon Islands, Tonga Tala took the gold and became the Sol2023 Pacific Games Champion, the first time for Tonga netball.

Tala 2024

The team will be preparing for the upcoming PacificAus Sports Australia on 10-15 June 2024.

Jaqua said a big focus this year is the World Youth Cup Qualifiers in September, and the World Youth Cup next year in Gibraltar.


The head coach said that while she's in Tonga, she will work together with the Tonga Netball Association to look for local talent, and to see how they can get more local netball players into these national pathways.