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

There are now, but there wasn't at the time.

I was literally asking coaches, some of the Tongan players that I did know, if they knew anybody, one of my players actually got their next door neighbor.

So that's, that's honestly how it happened.

So not only had I not met these players, the players hadn't met each other and we met at the airport in Sydney and

five days before we were supposed to play and I didn't even know their names.

They didn't even know each other's names.

It's quite funny when you look back at it.

You know, quite often you'll hear coaches or experts or people in sport talk about this connection that you need to have with people or that once you find it,

It's the missing piece because I think anybody can be taught how to play the sport.

We're all at different levels of execution, but with this group, the connectedness and the feeling that they got from each other was so unique and ingrained in them that

It was bigger and stronger than anything I could have taught them from all my coaching books.

Because when you watch them play in the early days, even now, there's a magic that happens with them and that can never be taught.

Their purpose was never about them.

Their purpose was never about their team.

Their purpose was about what their team brings their people.

and it's what drives them.

So we kind of got on this roller coaster before we'd even hit the World Cup.

But the pride and the achievement was in actually getting there.

And at the time, we'd also reached seventh in the World Cup.

I think we went from 42nd in the world to 7th in the world and it was something insane, like five months.

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