At Glasgow University he was in receipt of a prize, a post probably teaching English at the Chilean Naval College, which, after teaching in Glasgow for a short period, in 1892 took him to Valparaiso, then Chile's main city and still its main port. The city then had a substantial British merchant population, including families, a good number of whom were Scots. And it was there in 1877 that the Mackay and Sutherland school was founded by Scots with by 1882 football on the curriculum. And it seems that perhaps after a year again teaching back in Scotland in 1893 he was recruited by Mackay and Sutherland to teach mathematics and possibly sport, from where by 1898 he was back at the Naval College as "Superintendent of Games". It was also at about this time he met a Chilean-Irish girl, Alice Condon, from the southern city of La Lota by Concepcion. They married in 1901.

But in the meantime in 1895 he had with the three Valparaiso Scots been instrumental in the foundation of the Chilean Football Association (CFA), acting as Secretary and, whilst the power in Chilean football gradually moved to Santiago and he became more involved in athletics, he did return to the sport. By 1908, now in his forties, he was a noted referee. In 1910 he was treasurer of the Valparaiso Football Association and, as Spanish-speaking Chileans became more involved with the game he in 1913 became the last "British" president of the very organisation he had been instrumental in creating, the CFA.     

At that point or soon after he would leave Valparaiso permanently, by 1916 moving to La Lota, abandoning the game and living out the rest of his life there or thereabouts. He would die in Concepcion in 1950 at the age of eight-two, his wife out-living him by six years.