Manawatū Jets coach Natu Taufale is building this year’s squad

New Manawatū Jets coach Natu Taufale has dedicated the past 20 years to improving coaches. Now he’s taken on the task of building a new Jets squad.

Taufale has taken over from Tim McTamney, part of some big changes to the NBL team this year, which has a new business model and will have a new-look squad.

At the end of last year a group of more than 20 people and organisations, led by Property Brokers managing director Tim Mordaunt, created and funded a new business structure for the team.

Now the season is fast approaching and Taufale is putting his squad together.

Five players have been signed – forwards Nathaniel Salmon, Tu Kaha Cooper and Shane Temara, as well as guards Pafe Momoisea and Klein Salmon – and more should be announced soon.

Coaching staff will be announced next week and pre-season training will soon start. They had four trials which were all well attended.

Taufale said they were talking to a couple of New Zealand-level players who were playing overseas and he was optimistic about the squad he was building.

“With the group we get we will be competitive this year. We want to develop for years two, three, four and want to plan accordingly.

“We don't want to get to a stage where we’re competitive one year then a flop the next. It’s about investing in sustainability with our development over the next couple of years.”

Taufale said he had looked at a development plan with junior players coming through and he wanted good people to fit their style.

“We’re just getting our chemistry right. We’re just arriving here and we just want to establish what we're about. We’ll look at how we're going to play this year.”

The Jets job will be Taufale’s first men’s coaching role since 2008 when he took the Wellington Saints development team to win the second division title, but he has been heavily involved in basketball as a player and coach.

He was part of the Hutt Valley Lakers team for eight years in the 1990s and won two NBL titles.

The Lakers merged with the Saints and Taufale played a season for the Saints, then spent two years as an assistant coach and was the head coach in 2000, when they lost in the quarterfinals.

From there he coached junior Hutt Valley teams and worked for the New Zealand Institute of Sport for 10 years developing their tertiary coaching courses.

After that he became Basketball New Zealand’s national director of coach development for eight years.

He also worked for International Basketball Federation FIBA as an accredited coach and coach developer, and worked in Brunei, Dubai and Singapore.

He said he always knew he would come back to coaching, so he was keen on taking up the challenge when the Jets opportunity arose and has now moved to Palmerston North with his family.

Even though Covid-19 means there is some uncertainty about what the league will look like, Taufale was carrying on as if everything would happen as normal.