Mayo's Sam Maguire Victory Sparks Hope for Westmeath

John Heslin watched Mayo finally lift Sam Maguire and saw more than just history being made. He saw a door swing open.

A 75-year wait ended in Croke Park on Sunday as Andy Moran’s Mayo cracked the code at last, and for counties like Westmeath, that breakthrough felt personal. Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport alongside Brendan Devenney and Ciarán Whelan, Heslin made it clear: Mayo’s moment has lit a fire.

“It kind of gives every other county that hope,” he said, the words landing with the weight of experience. Hope, and a chance. That’s all a player ever really wants. For Heslin, the hunger hasn’t dimmed. If anything, Mayo’s win has sharpened it.

No farewell yet

At 34, with an inter-county career that already includes a retirement and a return, Heslin could easily have framed 2026 as a swansong. He’s not having that.

“Still a current Westmeath footballer anyway,” he said with a grin. The anecdote that followed said plenty about where his head is. A recent round of golf with Westmeath manager Mark McHugh came and went without any gentle nudges towards the exit. “He didn’t tell me to retire yet, so current for now.”

Current – and crucial. Westmeath’s year may have been overshadowed nationally by Mayo’s All-Ireland, but inside the county, 2026 will be remembered as something far more than a footnote.

They didn’t just compete. They broke through.

Westmeath claimed only their second ever Leinster title, taking down Dublin in a gripping provincial final at Croke Park in May. For a county long cast as background noise in Leinster, that win alone would have been enough to define a generation.

Heslin, back in the maroon, played his part in that run. Yet when asked to pick his game of the year, he didn’t go for the Leinster final. He went back further, to a day when he wasn’t even on the pitch.

The day it all felt different

Quarter-final, Tullamore. Westmeath against Meath. One of those fixtures that carries its own history before a ball is thrown in.

Meath arrived heavily fancied, tagged as one of the favourites for the Leinster Championship. Westmeath arrived as “severe underdogs,” as Heslin put it. The script looked familiar.

Then Westmeath tore it up.

That 4-18 to 0-25 win didn’t just rattle the province. It jolted something inside the county. Heslin watched it from the outside, still retired, still a supporter. The performance, and what followed, left him feeling like his eventual recall to the panel was almost surreal.

He joked that when he came back in, “they were just taking a fan from the crowd.” But there was a deeper truth in that line: he had seen something worth coming back for.

He could easily have pointed to the Dublin game as his standout. Only a second Leinster crown in Westmeath’s history. The end of Dublin’s absolute dominance in his personal timeline – 14 seasons in which the Dubs had won Leinster every single year he played.

He had even spoken before rejoining the panel about how bittersweet it might be to watch Westmeath finally topple Dublin without him involved, after so many years trying. Instead, he returned, and got to live it from the inside.

Yet he deliberately stepped aside from that moment when choosing his match of the year.

“So I put that one aside to give the lads the full credit they deserve,” he said. His pick? “Biased enough, of course, Westmeath versus Meath.”

Young guns and a turning tide

That day in Tullamore, he felt, captured the essence of this year’s championship – and mirrored Mayo’s own surge to Sam. It wasn’t just the result. It was who delivered it.

“The young lads for Westmeath that day were just unreal,” he said.

Shane Corcoran hit a wonder goal. Matty Whittaker struck another and then backed it up with such consistency that he forced his way onto The Sunday Game Team of the Year. Score after score, run after run, Westmeath’s emerging core played like a group refusing to accept their supposed place in the pecking order.

It wasn’t a plucky upset. It was a statement.

For Heslin, sitting in the stand, it was something more intimate. A glimpse of what Westmeath could become.

“There was a sense on that day that this Westmeath team has something special in it,” he recalled. You don’t say that lightly in a county that has had to scrap for every inch of recognition.

That Meath game will live with him “as a Westmeath fan,” he admitted, before adding the important coda – “but obviously now still as a player as well.”

And that’s where the story really lies. A 34-year-old forward, already once retired, watching Mayo end 75 years of waiting and seeing not closure, but possibility. Watching his own county topple giants, first Meath, then Dublin, and deciding there’s more still to chase.

Mayo have shown the mountain can be climbed. Westmeath have started up the slope. The question now is simple, and Heslin clearly wants to be around to help answer it: how far can they go?