Alex was fourteen when in 1921 his family emigrated, his father an Edinburgh-born miner, he mother from Lochgelly. It meant his football, he a full-back, was formed but not fully shaped in Scotland. And, initially finding work in a steel mill, he first turned out for the prominent Chicago team, Bricklayers and Masons, the Windy City being about thirty miles north-west from Gary across the State Line. That is before transferring to the company-ream, Holley Carburettor from Detroit about 250 miles east. And that movement eastward to continue. In 1930, immediately after the World Cup, he was signed by Brooklyn Wanderers from New York for a season, as US soccer more or less collapsed around him economically. 

And it was at this point that the decision must have been contemplated to come back to Britain. But not quite yet. In June 1930 in Streator in Illinois, described as Tool Designer and a week before his departure to Montevideo, Alex had married Mildred Marshall. From Streator herself she was American-born but the daughter of a Scot from Wishaw. And Alex and she would have one son, born in August 1931. Thus for the 1931-32 and 1932-33 seasons there were more pressing matters than sport and the move was only made in 1933, even then without total conviction. Alex had sailed for England in 1932 with a return passage booked but, presumably with a deal done, failed to take it up.

As it was, once joined by the family, the British on-field return itself must have been relatively easy. Wood had signed for Leicester. Uncle Johnny had only finished playing professionally in 1930 and was doing so still as an amateur locally so there were connections and support. Uncle Tom too was staying in the city. And the Scots-American would stay at Filbert St. for three seasons, in the second of which the team was relegated but then steadied. Then came a sideways transfer to Nottingham Forest for a season, at the end of which Leicester would be re-promoted, followed by at thirty a drop into the Southern League in Essex with newly-formed Colchester United and then, he recorded as a Nickel & Tin Plater, newly-elected Chelmsford City.