Lochhead himself had been born in 1863. Both parents were from Paisley, his father a printer. His trade was initially a Band-Sawer and later Cabinet Maker. His footballing, as a half-back, began with local team Neilston Victoria but at eighteen he stepped up to the Paisley team, Abercorn, for three seasons. He then moved to the more local, top-flight team, Arthurlie of Barrhead, for a season in the year he married for the first time but was clearly looking for something else in first spending the 1885-6 season at more distant Morton and then heading South. However, he went to Notts Castle, a club in Nottingham that would collapse faster than it had been formed.

After that it was back to Arthurlie for one campaign and on to Third Lanark for three more. And it was there that he made a mark and in more than one sense. In December 1888 he was convicted of an on-field assault of a player from one of his ex-clubs, Abercorn. Nevertheless in 1889 The Thirds with him very much in the team would take the Scottish Cup and he personally win a first, and only, cap, on the strength of which he tried his luck Down South once more. This time he went to Everton, boarding as a cabinet-maker close to the ground, as Mary stayed at home, but arriving in early 1891 he did not establish himself, stayed a little over year and came North once more. But he came as an English professional into a still amateur Scotland and had, on re-joining his previous club, to wait until the following summer, that of 1892, to be reinstated to play.

The second stay at Cathkin Park would last a year. He ceased to play, albeit temporarily, in 1893 now aged thirty. The reason is perhaps the three children he already had and the increasingly poor health of Mary. She would die within two years and it would take another year before he was back, remarried, and playing, but now more locally. He had a season at Neilston once more, another with Cartvale in Busby and a last one with Barrhead Amateurs before at thirty-six finally hanging up those boots.