Things to admire in a club:
- Good facilities - means good volunteer base to raise funds (excluding those who received developers money, or Chinese money to relocate)
- competitive first teams - maximising their abilities to mix it at as high a level as possible for what they are capable of
- multiple lower teams - every club should have 2 teams (apart from a very small handful) but some clubs with high juvenile numbers have very poor retention rate and poorly run lower grade teams
- Dual club and - encouraging both hurling and football as much as possible.
What other criteria should you be looking at?
Prioritising the players of age and not have a win-at-all-costs mentality in younger age groups.
Even in B or C competitions, say u15, so many coaches will fill the team with their best u14 players and let the u15s rot on the bench bar a token 5 minutes at the end if 20 points up.
I understand it without fully agreeing with it for the first team, but the 2nd or 3rd teams should be about participation and giving young fellas confidence and a sense of belonging.
Also clubs who stream teams too early, I see some clubs are streaming them into A and B teams at u10.
I don't see the point when most opponents have all teams mixed. It just means their As will hockey everyone and their Bs will be the opposite.
These coaches are usually failed players and enjoy the plaudits and ego boost of winning the Johnny Murphy B Competition Perpetual u13 Plate.
Nemo were always good in this regard, maybe because the coaches were highly decorated and coached without egos.
The Glen were the opposite, in a couple of underage teams I encountered anyway.
Besides being unsporting, it shows poor long-term vision as potential late bloomers will just leave the sport early.
Glen Rovers, flag bearers for hurling on the Northside for over a century - it's not for everyone. 
