The problem seems to have been with Templeton his inconsistency, hence club frustration perhaps. But because of his sheer talent he also, nevertheless, would between 1902 and 1912 win eleven caps, six of them against England. That is before before finally hanging up his boots at thirty-five in 1915 and running full-time the Royal Hotel that had part-owned since 1909. He then married, in Kilmarnock still, in 1916, his bride, Sarah McCourt, ten years older than he and the daughter of another publican and in 1919, aged not quite forty, simply dropped dead of a heart-attack. He is buried in Kilmarnock's Kaimshill Cemetery, survived by Sarah for thirty two years. She would pass away in 1951 at the age of eighty-one and be laid beside him.