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

No team. No coach. No training facilities.No problem.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.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."Then came mention of Tonga's vision."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.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.Against the odds, Tonga won gold.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."