John Heslin: Westmeath's Hopeful Comeback After Mayo's Triumph

John Heslin is not done yet. Not after a year when Mayo tore up the script for every so‑called small or middling county in the land.

As Andy Moran’s Mayo finally lifted Sam Maguire and ended 75 years of anguish, the Westmeath talisman was listening, watching and quietly plotting. On RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport, sitting alongside Brendan Devenney and Ciarán Whelan, Heslin sounded like a man who has seen the door crack open and has no intention of walking away now.

Mayo’s win, he said, has changed the landscape.

It is not just their story. It is fuel for everyone else.

“I think that’s probably one thing that’s gone under the radar a little bit with Mayo winning,” Heslin said, pointing to the message that resonated with him and his own camp under Mark McHugh. “It kind of gives every other county that hope and as a sportsperson you just want to have that hope and that chance. The hunger is still there for sure.”

At 34, after an initial inter-county retirement that stretched to almost a year and a half, many assumed Heslin’s days in maroon and white were over. They are not.

“(I’m) still a current Westmeath footballer anyway,” he said, half-joking but entirely clear. “I was golfing with Mark McHugh a couple of weeks ago and he didn’t tell me to retire yet, so current for now.”

The line drew a laugh, but the intent behind it is serious. Mayo have proved that history can be ripped up. Westmeath, in their own way, already started doing that in 2026.

A Leinster breakthrough – and something deeper

Mayo’s All-Ireland triumph will dominate the year’s headlines, and rightly so. Yet Westmeath quietly produced one of the great stories of the championship, and Heslin was at the heart of it.

Back from the wilderness, he helped the county to only their second ever Leinster title, a seismic victory that came at Croke Park in May against Dublin, the team that had owned the province for more than a decade.

For Heslin, that win carried a personal edge. Fourteen seasons of watching Dublin collect Leinster after Leinster had left a mark.

“I would have been on record for saying previously that Dublin had won the Leinster Championship every year I had played football which was 14 seasons and I was just very lucky to come back and be part of that team,” he said.

He had even spoken publicly, before rejoining the panel, about how bittersweet it would be if Westmeath finally toppled Dublin without him. Then he found himself back in the dressing room, part of the group that actually did it.

That alone could have been his game of the year. He refused to pick it.

“Naturally it’d be easy for me to pick Westmeath and Dublin, the second time Westmeath have only ever won the Leinster Championship,” he admitted. But he wanted the spotlight elsewhere, to give others their due. “So I put that one aside to give the lads the full credit they deserve.”

The day in Tullamore that changed everything

To find his match of the year, Heslin had to rewind the tape, back to a day when he was not on the pitch at all, just another nervous supporter in the stand.

Quarter-final day in Tullamore. Westmeath against Meath. Severe underdogs against a side widely tipped as one of the favourites for the Leinster Championship. A rivalry loaded with history, and mostly pain from a Westmeath perspective.

“We haven’t gotten over Meath too many times in the championship,” Heslin said. That was the backdrop. Then came the explosion.

Westmeath 4-18, Meath 0-25. A shootout, a statement, and a performance that crackled with the kind of youthful fearlessness that can redefine a county’s ceiling.

Heslin watched it all from the stands, technically retired, feeling less like an ex-player and more like a man who had just been pulled back in.

His recall later on, he admitted, almost felt surreal. “They were just taking a fan from the crowd,” he joked. Yet that is exactly how that day in Tullamore hit him: as a supporter first.

“But Westmeath that day, and I think it epitomised this year’s championship and particularly the way Mayo won, the young lads for Westmeath that day were just unreal,” he said.

He rattled off the moments that still play in his mind. Shane Corcoran’s “wonder goal”. Matty Whittaker’s finish and the level of performance that would eventually see him named on The Sunday Game Team of the Year.

These were not just nice cameos. They were markers.

“It was a very special victory in Tullamore for Westmeath that day and there was a sense on that day that this Westmeath team has something special in it,” Heslin said.

For him, that afternoon remains the emotional peak. Not the Leinster final in Croke Park. Not even his own comeback. The day the young guns tore into Meath and refused to bow to the odds.

“So that for me will live long in my memory as a Westmeath fan, but obviously now still as a player as well.”

A fan who came back from the stands. A county that has stopped accepting its old limits. In a season when Mayo finally broke their curse, Westmeath’s most decorated forward has decided he is not ready to step away from the chase.

Hope, as he keeps saying, is back on the table.