Ellen Dowling and Claire Sullivan say goodbye to inter-county football 

Firm friends Ellen Dowling of Suncroft and Claire Sullivan of Carbury, longtime soldiers in the Lilywhite jersey of Kildare, announced their retirement from intercounty football recently. The pair gave outstanding service to the county and witnessed great success in the early days of their journey before some disappointing years were endured. Ellen and Claire finished on a high claiming back-to-back League promotions in 2023 and 2024 as well as Leinster and All Ireland success in 2023 during Diane O’Hora’s managerial reign in Kildare. They were part of new manager, Pat Sullivan’s squad which retained Division 1 and senior championship status this year.

There were hints that both Ellen and Claire would step down after Kildare’s quarter final exit to then All Ireland champions, Kerry in July but they waited until recent weeks to make the final decision. The Kildare Nationalist sat down with the dynamic duo and spent a very enjoyable hour as they gave their reasons for stepping away now and reflected on their ten or so years on intercounty action.

Why make the decision now we wondered?

Ellen told us, “When I went back last year a bit of me was thinking ‘Jeez, will I go back another year again’. We had a new management and a new set up so I said I would give it another year. There was a great bunch of girls there who could potentially go on and push for Leinster and compete in senior. I kind of knew myself that with injuries and setbacks throughout the year that the last few months probably weren’t as enjoyable as they would have been in previous years. Going into that Kerry game I probably knew that was going to be my last game so hence a lot of the emotions and posts after that game. I think the girls knew even if we hadn’t said it.” Claire explained.

“I actually met Ellen and Trina (Duggan) for a coffee in Clane before we had gone back and I told the girls I think I’ll leave it there but the two of them convinced me to go back. So, I went back and gave it another year with Pat and the management. There was a really good group. Then the two girls left me, Ellen through injury, so there was only me in the cold and rain in Hawkfield in November and I was saying why did I let them convince me to do this. It was a great year; I did really enjoy it and I’m glad that I went back but it felt right to leave it at that. There comes a time when you want to enjoy your bit of down time. You have given everything you possibly could at an extremely high level and it takes its toll on you.” Ellen recently married former Kildare player, Paul Cribbin, who retired the same week as Ellen the previous year. She spent eleven years involved with Kildare and was of the same opinion as her Carbury friend.

“I just wanted my next couple of years to be more like going on a couple of holidays and have more time with family and friends. That’s something that is pushed to the back when you are focussing on football. When you’re in it you don’t mind missing a wedding or something but it’s just now you probably feel that you have given so much and you just want to enjoy the next stage of your life.” Claire added, 

“When you’re in there you can’t do anything by a half measure or you’re not going to succeed first of all so you have to be fully in it and you make sacrifices. There just comes a point where you want to enjoy your bit of free time, if you have any free time.” Ellen started with the Kildare senior team in her last year as minor in 2014 and her first competitive match was against Meath in the League in what was then Hawkfield.

“In my second year, in 2015, we were in an All-Ireland Final so you think you’re going to be there every year. We were there the following year (2016) and I have unbelievable memories of it that I still think about to this day. The following years, 2017/18/19, I look back now and say I probably should have gone on a J1 or done a bit of travelling but I think if a few of us had left then we probably wouldn’t have gotten out of that rut and had the good success that we did in 2023.” Although asked in while she was still a minor Claire Sullivan didn’t start in earnest with the Kildare senior set up until 2014, claiming she “was very shy”.

“I actually marked Ellen in the first trial game that year,” she laughs. “Then I broke my collarbone, then I did my ankle. I went back in 2017/18 after missing all the good stuff the previous year. I think going through those tough years and being hammered by the same teams probably made us a bit stronger as a group.” Both players came into a very strong Kildare group at that time which included such players as Noelle Earley, Maria Moolick and Aisling Holton and although she looked up to those players, Ellen said she felt very nervous when she first started with them.

“I was shy but I would have had Rachel Cribbin and she is more outgoing that me so she would bring me along with her and eased me into the team. I remember when I was 12 or 13 and sitting beside Maria Moolick in Croke Park and my Da always saying that I was going to play with her one day and I used to be so embarrassed. When I actually got to that point, it was a bit surreal but I had to get over that because you are competing with girls you actually want to get on the team with. They were unbelievable. They paved the way for my career with Kildare especially the hard years when I stuck it out when we weren’t winning. I would still look up to Aisling who is still playing with Balyna now.” “We always have someone to look up to and there are young kids who look up to us now, in Suncroft for Ellen and Carbury for me and with Kildare, well I hope so now. We were always looking at what was ahead of us as well,” Claire adds.

While there was a dip in form after the All-Ireland success in 2016 Kildare did come back to form in the Covid year of 2020 when they won all their League games but no Final was played because of the pandemic and again Kildare suffered a dip in form in subsequent years. “I was actually out with a dislocated shoulder for that League campaign so the break came at a good time for me,” Ellen tells us. “For the girls playing there was an unfairness about having no Final after we had struggled for the previous years.” Having the right group of players was instrumental in the success under Diane O’Hora according to Claire. “We were probably all in the right mindset and we had the right mix of what was needed to succeed.” “We had experience and we had new girls coming in who had great success with the underage teams,” Ellen adds. “With Diane and the coaching team she had in I think we had a right mix of everything.” Claire continues, “being so close and then not so close in the previous few years gave us the extra motivation and having the likes of Ruth Sargent coming in was unbelievable.” Ellen again, “Our aim was to get out of Division 3 that year and we felt if we can do that, we can do anything.” “We knew we would have a good chance then in Division 2 if we kept training hard and kept the high standards up,” Claire says. “We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if we were half-arsed going at it again. Once we performed to the level that we knew we could we felt the League was probably ours to lose that year.” Reflecting on the All-Ireland win in 2023 Ellen recalls the weeks running up to the game as well as the week afterwards.

“It was one of the best days of your life. The weeks leading up to it around the county were brilliant and then the week afterwards we had as a collective. When you look back it’s not the hard nights in the winter that you remember it’s those days after the All-Ireland.” Playing in Division 1 and in the senior championship was vital according to Claire.

“For Kildare football it was needed. We had been stuck in Division 3 for five or six years but you are only going to get better by playing the best teams. You gain so much from playing those really conditioned senior teams that have been there for so long. 2025 was a very successful year for us, getting to the All-Ireland quarter final and beating Armagh along the way. It wasn’t easy to do it.

Ellen told us that she played under seven managers while Claire believes she has played under three. “Each brings their own kind of unique style,” Claire believes. “They have to make the decisions that are best for Kildare but they always have to bring the players along with those decisions and I think they all did that to the best of their ability. Players are there to be challenged, managers are there to be challenged.” Both players had onerous and successful jobs so we wondered how they managed work, training, playing and life with family and friends.

“One of the other reasons this year that I particularly found it so difficult was I started a new job back in January as a manager in Pfizers so that was a lot of extra workload for me,” Ellen tells us.

“I would be fairly career driven so trying to balance that was tough and we were trying to plan our wedding so I had three full time jobs at one stage,” she laughs.

So that was another defining reason so now I can give everything to family life and Suncroft.” For Claire travelling to training from Carbury was always a challenge but an enjoyable one. “I had a decent aul car pool so we knocked a bit of craic out of it. It got smaller and smaller every year. Me and Ellen were the originals but at one stage there were two cars. I read Dan’s (Flynn) interview and he was very open and honest about it. There are so many years that you have all that in you, committing to the analysis, the travel, the overnights, the training camps and then it comes to a point where you say I think I’m done with that side of things. You still love your football; you still love your sport. Any sport I get my hands on I’ll watch but you just want to enjoy your time with your club. It’s a long time since we got a good run at training with the club so you’re looking forward to those times again.” It was “all football” growing up in the Dowling household in Suncroft where Ellen’s eldest brother Ciaran, played with and was always top scorer with the club and Fionn, played with Kildare and was top scorer in the Kildare intermediate championship this year.

“Ciaran was a left footer so I got a few tips from him and then Fionn had two feet but I was always told, you’re Fionn Dowling’s little sister, I was never my own person,” she laughs again.

“I had great role models in the two lads and my Da, John, would have brought me to every single and that would have been how we bonded. Only in the last few years now my poor Mam, Anne, has been roped into going to matches. She absolutely hates it so the day I decided to retire my Mam said it was the happiest day of her life. My Dad passed away in 2020 so dealing with that from a football point of view was tough but we had a very competitive household.” Claire too grew up in a very sporting family.

“My father played soccer, they were all soccer heads to be honest. Thomas, my brother, would have had trials with Aston Villa and he played for Dundalk. We were all just really competitive too. My sister Gillian was into athletics and javelin and she is still ridiculously fit. We love the competition side of it. There was a big gap between me and my siblings so I ended up being closer to my nieces who were closer to me in age. Thomas is probably the one I remember the most though as he played with Carbury until I don’t know what age and I remember watching him and he played with Kildare as well.” Ellen moved from a very successful sporting family in Suncroft to an equally successful sporting family in Johnstownbridge when she married former Kildare star Paul Cribbin who’s brother Keith and sister, Rachel were both intercounty stars with Kildare.

“I would have been best friends with Rachel, growing up from U12 and I was always in their house. I thought my house was competitive until I went into theirs. Between her Da and my Da at matches I wouldn’t say there were always pleasantries,” Ellen says laughing.

“The commitment that Paul, Keith and Rachel have given to Kildare is immense and I think that is why Paul and myself are so well suited as we are both very driven and competitive. I’m lucky to have found a family like that has the same values.” Kevin Feely was one of the groomsmen at Ellen and Paul’s wedding so he had a busy day on that day as he also lined out for Athy in the defeat of Summerhill in the AIB Leinster SFC Quarter Final in Cedral St Conleth’s Park.

It was something similar for Claire who married Carbury and Kildare footballer, Brian O’Flaherty who’s brothers, Eoghan and Morgan, were also former Kildare stars.

“Brian and I went on our first date fifteen years ago today (the day of the interview) and I remember him saying it was great that we both play sport and that we’ll never get annoyed if the other one is training.” Claire of course hit the headlines for her wedding to Brian as she togged out for Kildare against Clare two days after her wedding.

“Because of Covid we had 25 guests at the wedding in Rathsallagh in Wicklow and it was a great day and everyone enjoyed themselves because we had been housebound for so long. We went on our honeymoon to the Maldives two years later,” she recalls.

Claire says she will look back on her career “very fondly”.

“It was very hard by times. There is no point in saying it is easy to do it, it is not. But we had great times and we can talk about all the wins and all the trophies and they are obviously amazing and playing in Croke Park is something you’d wish everyone could experience because it is so amazing. It’s really about the friendships that you make and the different connections that you make. There would be a group of us there that would be very close in the last couple of years and we would be meeting up outside of training and playing. We were at Ellen’s wedding. I meet the girls for coffee or Pilates. They’re relationships that you’re going to have for the rest of your life. It’s just something special.” For Ellen the highlights would be “that Division 3 Final as well as the two All Irelands, from a footballing point of view.

“As Claire said it was extremely difficult at times when you think Jeez can I actually continue doing this and you really have to reflect on yourself. Again, it just goes back to the friendships you make. Myself and Claire, we wouldn’t know each other except for football, Rachel and Trina Duggan were both my bridesmaids and I wouldn’t have met them if it wasn’t for football. I wouldn’t have met Paul if it wasn’t for football. We all still meet up and we are friends for life. I was watching The Office last week and it was the last episode and there was a quote which said - I wish someone would have told me I was in the good times when I was in them – and that’s something that sits with me. You give out when you miss something or you were out training in the wet and the cold there were definitely good days with fond memories.” Ellen and Claire have worn the Lilywhite jersey with pride and distinction and would have gone through brick walls for that jersey. They have fond memories of playing with Kildare but they have given us great memories and great days that we remember fondly. We wish them both a Happy Intercounty Retirement, thank them for giving such enjoyment to us all and wish them every success with their respective clubs, Suncroft and Carbury.