Having emailed Peter Coburn, it seems that the excision of NQ as a separate team is at the 'request' of the ASC. Since the ASC gives TBA a significant amount of money, unfortunately TBA simply had to comply. They were told to do the same with Presidents Shield, but managed to convince them that it would not be a good idea. Quote: "Australian Sports Commission also wished to adopt this same structure for President's Shield but we argued against this and received a concession for the junior event only."
According to Peter, NZ will be invited for as long as they wish to attend, and it is his intention to invite NQ as long as the Board approve. TBA don't seem to be at fault here, as they cannot afford to chuck away a quarter of a million a year in funding, so we just have to hope that NQ can backdoor into the tournament. In the meantime, it is probably worth exploring some alternative rolloff/selection/training options in case we don't get the nod. Despite bowling like a ruptured duck in the tournament, I had a great time and intend to make the effort to rolloff in 2007, whether that be for NQ or just Q.
My personal opinion is that full selection is a bad option, as the selectors won't get to see all of the bowlers unless they travel to all of the tournaments, North and South. My feeling is that the best option is to link selection rolloffs to one northern and one southern tournament. That leaves the problem of training camps to be addressed, and it may be cheaper to fly the coach(es) up or down and have just one combined camps.
This assumes that a mix of bowlers make the team, of course.
Yes, it is a backward step for Queensland bowling, but getting hysterical over something that TBA really don't have any choice in is not going to help anyone.
Cheers, Robbie.