Becoming a father has given Callum Whelan a newfound appreciation for his childhood years.
Priorities have changed, and life has taken on a different outlook, since the birth of his daughter – Isla Parker Whelan – in March 2023, with the 25-year-old finely balancing playing duties at Gateshead alongside his family duties back in Manchester.
One immediate realisation that his foray into fatherhood has given him though, is sincere gratitude for the sacrifices his own parents made in order to get him to the point in his career he finds himself in today.
“They dedicated a lot of their life for me,” he said.
“All I wanted to do was play football, and when I was nine I signed the kids forms at Manchester United and went full time there, four days a week.
“My Mum and Dad used to take me across the Woodhead for those four days, an hour there and an hour back, and I’m so grateful for them now.
“I remember I would finish school at 3:30pm and my Mum would have my food ready in Tupperware, which I would literally eat in the car on the way there.
“Her and my Dad would come straight from work to take me there, and it was like that four days a week – even the weekends were taken up because we trained on Saturday and Sunday.
“Football probably got in the way of school actually because that was all I wanted to do!
“As a kid, I was just getting on with it and loving playing football, but now I look back and think wow, especially now that I’ve got my own kid.
“They wouldn’t ever change doing that for me because they wanted me to be happy, but the sacrifices they made were crazy.
“Anything I can do now to try and re-pay a tiny bit of that time, I try my best to do.”
The sacrifices once made by his parents are now the very same ones he considers for his own daughter, with one being the two-and-a-half hour drive – each way – back to his family home in Manchester he shares with his partner, Lucy.
Whelan and his newborn daughter, Isla Parker.
Those five hours are an insignificant price to pay, though.
“The travelling is so worth it, because I’m going back to see the missus and the baby,” he said.
“It’s crazy – I didn’t think I was ready [for parenthood] and I was proven right!
“It’s an amazing feeling though and I love it to bits.
“I now look at what my parents did and think about how I want to give the best possible opportunities to my daughter when she’s older.
“I don’t know how my Mum and Dad did it, financially or how they got the time, but it’s crazy what you do for your kids.
“I’ve always been a family person, and I love being at home, and then I come up here and this is time to focus on football.
“I’m only here for the football side of it, so it’s good to have that balance.”
If family is the most important thing in Whelan’s life, football just about comes second.
Life at an early age consisted of playing football constantly, and when he couldn’t play football he’d be found watching it on Match of the Day – once he was old enough to stay up late enough – or impersonating his heroes on the PlayStation.
Having joined Manchester United as a nine-year-old though, football was taken much more seriously than most at his age.
Photo: Charlie Waugh
“It’s ingrained in you at a very young age that you’re playing for the biggest club in the world,” he said.
“You are always naturally going to be judged as the lad that plays for United, so it’s nailed into you that you’re always representing the club.
“The ways they taught respect, morals, timekeeping and other things made it such a great upbringing for me and it’s such a big part of the person I am today, along with my family.
“You’re representing the club 24/7 from such a young age, so you have to behave yourself and live like a professional footballer.”
Part of becoming a fully-fledged professional footballer is learning how to navigate a first-term changing room, which Whelan made his first foray into in an admittedly frustrating loan at League Two side Port Vale.
The midfielder didn’t play during his time with The Valiants, but it offered a valuable learning curve in how to navigate a first team changing room.
“I was very young when I went to Port Vale, I must have been 18 or 19,” he said.
“Playing wise, it didn’t go well, but that was my first experience of a first team changing room and the difference is just crazy.
“It’s mad, because at the time I couldn’t believe my eyes in how different it was – I was thinking surely not!
“Hanno [Luke Hannant] was in that changing room as well, and now I’m older I realise that they were all top guys and top professionals, it was a proper changing room.
“I actually enjoyed it, but I was probably too young at the time to really appreciate it because I just wanted to be playing – I maybe thought that I’d come from Man United so why was I not playing?
“They’re all massive lessons for becoming a regular first team player, because it’s so different to academy football.
“Saying that, the academy system at Man United is second to none, and I’m not sure there’s many places that do it like they do.
Whelan spent his formative years on the red side of Manchester.
“I saw something online that listed the amount of players who are in first team football now that have come through that academy, and there are so many boys that go on to have really good careers.
“I was so lucky and fortunate to be a part of that and it puts you in good stead for when you’re older.”
Nowadays, Whelan is an accomplished professional within the game.
More than 100 senior appearances with Watford, Oldham Athletic, Solihull Moors and now Gateshead have taught him a wide variety of lessons, ones that he now uses to progress as a player.
No longer a tunnel-visioned academy player solely set on pursuing his dreams in the game, Whelan has to put the goals of the team above his own as a first team professional.
The aim for him and his Gateshead team-mates for the remainder of this season then, is to break into the National League play-off places.
“The aim is one-hundred percent to be in the play offs,” said Whelan.
“That’s where we want to be, so anything that is below the play-offs would be a disappointing season because of the calibre of players and staff we have.
“We feel like we should be getting in those spots, so that’s the aim and success will be to end up there.
“If we can do that then in one-off games we fancy ourselves against anyone, so for us it’s just about getting in to give ourselves a chance.”
