Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson

speaker

125 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Documentary Podcast · The spirit of Tala: The rapid rise of Tonga's netball team · 23 Jul 2026 podcast

But you know what?

I saw it through and here we are.

Sometimes destiny just puts you in the path of the right people.

I was given a group of players...

And it looked very different.

And we actually didn't play any world ranked matches.

We played like a community netball event in Auckland.

And that was probably more informal because it wasn't world ranked and we didn't play against world ranked teams.

We slept on the floor of a community centre and we did the best we could with what we had.

And it was a very short process because we were only together for like a week.

And then following that event was Pacific Games later that year.

So then we started formalizing the process a little bit more.

Salute absolutely faced backlash over the selection process and where athletes were based.

I am constantly spoken to or asked about or even the reference that they're not really Tongan.

What's interesting is, and I've had conversations, it's like, well, if your goal and purpose was to be ranked in the top 10 and you won a Pacific Games gold medal and you want to get to a World Cup

It's about finding the best players available to us that meet the world netball criteria.

Asking that they live in Tonga is a whole other separate criteria.

And the athletes in Tonga and the netballers that are there, Tonga netball are doing an amazing job at developing local talent, but they're not world stage ready.

So you can't ask for one thing, but tie both hands behind our backs.

So, and that's, and that's where it became a decision around, well,

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