I don't personally know any of the coaches, players, or administrators for Sporting - all I can see is numbers on a screen. But it looks like the teams named Lawlor are already stronger, and performing better, than the RL teams in the 2009, 2008, and 06/05 age groups, and are only slightly behind the RL team in the 2010 age group. If they are stronger teams - there's not many justifiable reasons for the club to keep the inferior teams named RL, and the better teams in NPL. Whether it's a 1 game playoff, a season's worth of competition, or a DOC's perspective, it seems like the better team should play in the harder conference, and that team should continue to recruit players that will continue to let them grow stronger. In some sense it doesn't matter whether a player trained for years or drove X hours for tryouts/practice, or at least it shouldn't outweigh the ability for the team to succeed. Now getting to this outcome can be communicated poorly, well, and everything in between - and if anyone was promised something where the club is now changing their mind and saying they didn't mean it, I can certainly understand people being upset.