John Heslin’s Journey: From Fan to Leader in Westmeath Football

John Heslin is not going quietly.

As Mayo finally climbed the steps of the Hogan Stand again and ended 75 years of anguish, the Westmeath talisman was listening, watching – and plotting. For him, Andy Moran’s breakthrough is not just Mayo’s story. It is a roadmap.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport, the 34-year-old sounded every inch a man still in the fight, still convinced that days like Mayo’s can belong to so-called smaller counties too.

“It kind of gives every other county that hope,” he said, echoing a sentiment that has swept through the country since Sam Maguire changed hands on Sunday. Hope. Chance. That’s what he kept coming back to. “The hunger is still there for sure.”

Mayo’s moment, everyone’s message

Mayo’s All-Ireland SFC win has dominated the year, and rightly so. Seventy-five years of near-misses, scars and stories finally buried in one cathartic afternoon. Yet, as Heslin pointed out, one strand of that tale has slipped under the radar.

Mark McHugh, now in charge of Westmeath, touched on it on The Sunday Game: if Mayo can tear up the script, who says others can’t? Heslin has seized on that.

For a player who once walked away from the inter-county scene, it matters. He had retired, gone almost a year and a half without pulling on the maroon, and then came back into a dressing room that suddenly looked capable of more than just plucky resistance.

He is not done yet.

“Still a current Westmeath footballer anyway,” he smiled, before delivering the kind of line that tells you exactly where his head is. “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 fire, clearly, is still burning.

Leinster glory and a fan in the crowd

Mayo may have stolen the national spotlight, but Westmeath quietly carved out a landmark season of their own. With Heslin back in the fold, they surged to just the second Leinster title in the county’s history, felling Dublin in a gripping final at Croke Park in May.

For a generation of Westmeath players, Dublin had been the immovable object. Heslin knows that better than anyone.

He had long joked, and not without a touch of frustration, that Dublin had won Leinster every single year of his 14-season inter-county career. To finally be on the right side of that history, having rejoined the panel, felt like a rare twist of fortune.

“I was just very lucky to come back and be part of that team,” he admitted. It could easily have been a bittersweet watch from the stands, another day where others got to live the dream he had chased for years.

Yet when asked to pick his match of the year, he didn’t go for the obvious choice of that Dublin scalp. He went somewhere more personal, more raw.

Tullamore, underdogs and a sense of something special

Before his return, Heslin had been reduced to spectator status. One of those days, he stood among the crowd as Westmeath faced a heavily-fancied Meath side in the Leinster quarter-final.

On paper, it was supposed to be routine. Meath, tipped as one of the favourites for the provincial title, against severe underdogs. In reality, it turned into something else entirely.

Westmeath exploded.

They tore into Meath with a fearlessness that echoed the best of this year’s championship. By the end, the scoreboard read 4-18 to 0-25, a statement win that rattled the province and lit a fuse in Westmeath football.

Heslin watched it all like any other supporter, swept up in the chaos and disbelief.

He later joked that when the call eventually came to bring him back into the panel, “they were just taking a fan from the crowd.” It didn’t feel like a veteran returning. It felt like a supporter being dragged out of the terrace and handed a jersey.

That day in Tullamore, he insists, captured something deeper about where the county is heading.

“We haven’t gotten over Meath too many times in the championship,” he said. That is precisely why it meant so much. Westmeath walked into O’Connor Park written off and walked out transformed.

The young players, he said, were “just unreal”. Shane Corcoran’s wonder goal. Matty Whittaker’s strike and the performances that followed, good enough to earn him a spot on The Sunday Game Team of the Year. Scores that turned heads, and a display that shifted belief.

It wasn’t just a one-off ambush. It felt like a marker.

“There was a sense on that day that this Westmeath team has something special in it,” Heslin reflected. Not hype. Not bluster. Just a seasoned player recognising a new edge in his county.

A veteran’s gaze fixed on what’s next

For all that the Leinster title and the win over Dublin will sit forever in the record books, it is that afternoon in Tullamore that Heslin treasures most.

“So that for me will live long in my memory as a Westmeath fan,” he said, before catching himself and adding the line that matters most: “but obviously now still as a player as well.”

That dual identity – fan and leader – is where his story now lives. He has seen the years when Dublin were untouchable, when Westmeath’s role in Leinster felt pre-written. He has stepped away, only to be pulled back by the sense that something is stirring.

Mayo have shown the ceiling can be smashed. Westmeath, with a Leinster title in their pocket and a core of fearless young talent, are daring to look up.

Heslin, very much still “current for now”, intends to be there to see how far they can climb.