John Heslin on Mayo's All-Ireland Win and Westmeath's Rise

John Heslin watched Mayo lift Sam Maguire and saw more than history being made. He saw a door swing open for every so‑called smaller county, his own Westmeath included.

Mayo’s first All-Ireland SFC title in 75 years has been framed as a story of long-awaited redemption. For Heslin, speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport alongside Brendan Devenney and Ciarán Whelan, it was something else too: a jolt of energy, a reminder that the glass ceiling can crack.

“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,” he said, crediting Andy Moran’s side for lighting the way.

That hunger is not theoretical. At 34, and having already stepped away once from inter-county football, Heslin has every excuse to ease off. Instead, he is talking about coming back for more under Mark McHugh.

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

For Westmeath, 2026 was never going to compete with Mayo’s seismic breakthrough for column inches, but it was a landmark year in its own right. The county climbed out of the shadows and into the Leinster spotlight, claiming only their second ever provincial title with a gripping win over Dublin at Croke Park in May.

Heslin, freshly returned from an 18‑month retirement, played his part in that shock. Dublin had won the Leinster Championship every single year of his previous 14 seasons in maroon. To finally be on the right side of that result, having wondered if it would happen without him, carried a personal edge.

He had even admitted in an interview before rejoining the panel that seeing Westmeath beat Dublin while he was gone would be “bittersweet” for his generation, who had lived through the era of sky blue dominance. Instead, he was “very lucky to come back and be part of that team”.

Yet when he was asked to pick his game of the year, he didn’t go for the Leinster final. He went for something rawer, more unexpected: Westmeath’s quarter-final ambush of Meath in Tullamore.

That 4-18 to 0-25 victory came while Heslin was still in the stands, not the dressing room. He watched as a supporter, not a leader in the full-forward line, and later joked that his recall felt like “they were just taking a fan from the crowd”.

Westmeath travelled to Tullamore that day as “severe underdogs”. Meath, “rightly so at the time”, were being tipped as one of the favourites for Leinster. The script looked familiar. The performance did not.

“We haven’t gotten over Meath too many times in the championship,” Heslin admitted. But this time Westmeath ripped up the form book and wrote something far more daring.

The tone was set by the younger brigade. Heslin spoke with obvious pride about how the emerging talent drove the upset, linking their fearlessness to the wider pattern of the season and to Mayo’s own breakthrough.

“The young lads for Westmeath that day were just unreal,” he said. Shane Corcoran hit a “wonder goal”, Matty Whittaker also found the net and then backed it up with a string of displays good enough to land him on The Sunday Game Team of the Year.

Those scores did more than beat Meath. They hinted at a shift in identity, a team no longer content with plucky resistance.

“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 reflected.

So while the Leinster final win over Dublin will forever stand as a historic marker, it is that wild afternoon in Tullamore that he treasures most deeply.