Connie Selby thought her football days were behind her.
After a 45-year career that began with representing Australia as a player in the late 1970s and stretched through to various head coach and technical director roles across Asia and Oceania, Selby and her husband Jim — who also coached the Matildas in the early years — had settled into retirement, enjoying spending time with their grandchildren on their island home near Redland Bay in Queensland.
But in May last year, she got a phone call.
"It was completely out of the blue," Selby told ABC.
"It was the head of women's football in Tonga, who told me they were getting ready for the 2022 Women's Nations Cup, which is the path for OFC countries to qualify for the World Cup.
"She asked me if I would come and be their coach. I said, 'let me think about it.'
"So I said, 'OK, sure. Let's give it a go.'"
What followed was a journey that even Selby, with her many decades of globe-trotting experience, could not have anticipated. And it all started before she even got there.
Tonga was one of many Pacific nations that went into total international lockdown during the pandemic. As a result, Selby's first year in charge of the Tongan women's national team happened largely via Zoom, email, and phone calls. She would take PCR tests every month and was up-to-date with all her vaccinations, just in case there was the slightest chance she could be flown over at short notice.
"I'd put together training sessions and programs for them. They were training with the technical director in Tonga, playing games against boys, and they'd write to me or we'd talk over the phone about what we'd have to do.
"They didn't play a single international game for basically a whole year."
In January of this year, pandemic restrictions looked to be easing and Selby prepared herself to move to the small island nation. But that's when Tonga experienced another unexpected disaster.
About 65km north-west of its capital, Nuku'alofa, an underwater volcano known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai erupted.
The explosion sent a tower of gas and ash so high into the atmosphere that it touched the edge of space, becoming the largest volcanic plume ever captured by satellites.
It generated so much energy that the atmospheric waves it emitted were the fastest modern science has recorded, travelling around the earth six times at speeds "very close to the theoretical limit". The sonic boom could be heard as far as the United States.
It also caused a tsunami that swept across parts of Tonga, wiping out homes and businesses, carrying boats and boulders into the main streets of towns.
Fortunately, the country's main football facilities were spared: the giant waves cracked against the coral reef shelf and dispersed elsewhere along the western coastline.
Selby arrived in Tonga a few weeks later, only to realise that COVID had arrived, too — introduced on the aid ships sent by other nations to help with the clean-up.
Hundreds of unvaccinated Tongans fell ill. Some died. The entire country was plunged into lockdown, including strict curfews. All sport, including their fledgling women's league, stopped. Selby spent her first month in Nuku'alofa staring at the four walls of her apartment, or out to sea.
With the Women's Nations Cup just five months away, Selby had to do something — anything — to prepare her team to potentially claim one of the only Oceania spots available.
Then, out of the blue, an invitation by former Matildas coach Alen Stajcic to take part in a series of friendlies against the Philippines renewed her hopes.
But nothing has been easy for Selby and Tonga lately, and getting back to Australia for the April games was no different.
"We got the girls into a camp for a week," Selby said. "We weren't allowed to train [because of lockdown], but we got them together, tested them every day, and they were all clear.
"So we'd get up at five o'clock on the morning — it was still dark — and they'd go for runs. Just to get fit.
"We'd do things like that, all while keeping our distance.
"But when we were supposed to leave, something happened with the plane: the one we were supposed to get on just didn't happen. So we ended up getting our flights pushed back and missed the first game because we couldn't get there.
"We were up at 3am to get a flight from Fiji to Sydney, the girls hadn't had any breakfast, and with the time difference, we arrived in Australia around 11. By the time we got through customs and baggage, it was around one o'clock. Then the bus couldn't get out of the airport because the boom gates weren't working.
"By the time we got to our accommodation, it was probably 2:30pm, and we had a game at five. The girls are starving, they're exhausted, it's cold and raining. When we got to the field, the organisers said we all had to do COVID and passport checks — even though we'd just done them to get into the country.
"By the time we went out to warm up, it was probably 15 minutes before kick-off."
The two-digit score-line in the first game was no surprise in light of their tumultuous preparation, but the 92nd-ranked side only lost the second match 5-0 against a Philippines team who had already qualified for next year's Women's World Cup.
"They never gave up," Selby said. "They kept fighting to the last minute. We made mistakes, yes — silly things through tiredness, no food, all the travel. But they held their heads up high. They did really well."
This story alone illustrates the wider challenges that many women's national teams continue to face across the Pacific.
Unsuitable facilities (Tonga's main football complex doesn't have floodlights), vast distances, unreliable travel, a lack of equipment, few specialised staff members like goalkeeper coaches and physiotherapists, and the unpredictable natural environment all play a major role in how these Oceania countries are able to engage in the global game.
Many OFC nations rely on donations from wealthier countries and investment from governing bodies above them, especially FIFA, who have contributed money and personnel to develop "Just Play" programs and coach education courses across Tonga.
Indeed, they're one of the only Pacific nations to have two women's development officers who help deliver football initiatives throughout Tonga's various islands.
Selby sees the parallels between where women's football is in Tonga now and where it was when she played back in the 1970s.
"I remember training on a soccer field with maybe one light — a street light — and cars lined up nearby to light up the field," she said.
"That was probably the early 1970s. That's what we were given. But things got better and better: more money came in, more support from clubs. But it's still so tough for these girls. They want to succeed, they want to play well. They want to do their country proud.
One of the people looking after them is their major patron, Princess Lātūfuipeka of Tonga's royal family.
While visiting the team in Sydney, she gave them the nickname "Mataliki": a Polynesian word meaning "eyes of the god", named after the Pleiades cluster of stars that marks the Māori lunar new year. They're the only Tongan national team she has given a name to.
The Women's Nations Cup in Fiji is now in full swing, with the side going down 2-0 to Samoa in their first group match. The side has been whacked by COVID once again, with their best striker and sturdiest centre-back in isolation.
They take on the Cook Islands on Saturday, with the top two teams advancing to the knock-outs. The absence of perennial winners New Zealand, who qualified for 2023 automatically as co-hosts, means a new Oceania champion will be crowned and offered a shot at a Women's World Cup debut.
But even if they don't qualify for the expanded 32-team tournament next year, which they'd have to do by winning an intercontinental play-off tournament in February, Selby — alongside Jim, who's now in charge of the men's programs — hopes to leave the kind of legacy she did in Australia four decades ago.
"It'll be interesting to see what happens afterwards: whether this legacy continues on or whether they go, 'oh, we're not going to make it now, let's not bother,'" she said.
"But there is so much potential here. I loved representing my country; to me, it was the biggest pleasure of my life. For these girls, they don't have the money, they don't have the facilities. Not just them, but so many other countries as well.
"We've got so much out of sport, out of football. We've travelled the world; we've seen things we wouldn't have seen unless we were involved.
"We didn't want to just go there, coach, and then leave. We both want to leave a legacy.
"If these kids went to a World Cup, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. It would just be mind-boggling for them. So many of them are still teenagers, so many of them have barely even left Tonga before.
"We're getting ready, I reckon, for the next one. If the team can stay together, keep training, play more games, maybe they can do well. All we can do is try."
