Keys to My Life review: Ronnie Whelan's tales of Finglas and Liverpool
Brendan Courtney and Ronnie Whelan on Keys To My Life, on RTÉ One.
The latest episode of Keys to My Life is as much about the people who fill our lives as it is about the places that shape us.
In Finglas, football giant Ronnie Whelan revisits his childhood home, and attributes his drive to his dad, Ronnie Snr, who won two international caps for Ireland.
“I was always watching my Da,” he says, standing in the back garden where he “learned everything” about football.
There’s comedy as he describes how Ronnie Snr put him through a few heart-stopping moments. Sitting in his old football club, Home Farm, he recalls getting a professional contract with Liverpool in the late 1970s. Ronnie, pen poised to sign, was suddenly interrupted by his dad saying "We’d also like £20,000".
Sent out of the room by the powers-that-be while they got to grips with the request, Ronnie asked his dad what he was at.
"Trust me" is all his dad said. They got the £20,000 – and Ronnie Snr subsequently bought himself a black Mazda.
His dad died at 56 of stomach cancer.
“The person who has guided you through your life…not going to be there anymore…I still miss him to this day. I’d love to be coming home now and having a pint with him.” You sense how fervent that wish is.
When he visits his first residence in Liverpool – digs in the shadow of Anfield Stadium – the lonely contrast with his childhood home where he “always felt safe” couldn’t be stronger.
“It’s slightly prison cellish,” comments presenter Brendan Courtney, scanning the bedroom where a homesick Ronnie played rebel songs just to hear an Irish accent.
Then, in the suburban Liverpool home where he began married life with wife Elaine, Ronnie – in one incredible story – captures how Liverpool FC ruled every aspect of Whelan family life.
The club had an in-house gynaecologist and, explains Ronnie: “The wives got induced, so they would have the baby, which didn’t get in the way of football. So if we played a game on Saturday, Elaine would get induced on the Sunday.”
Sitting in Anfield Stadium, he recalls the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, the “many lives lost needlessly that day”.
Ronnie Whelan is a powerful storyteller and here he channels the awfulness of that tragedy into a very personal story: an 18-year-old fan, Ian Whelan, who’d embraced the nickname ‘Ronnie’ and who died at Hillsborough.
“I got in touch with his parents after. It was just something I felt I had to do…They'd only gone to watch a football match.”
- Keys To My Life is on RTÉ One on Sundays, and is available on the RTÉ Player
