Both Bob and Malcolm were born in Barrhead, the former in 1905, the latter in 1896. Their father, also Malcolm, was also born locally and variously described as a Cloth Finisher, an Engineman at a Dye Works, a Pottery Labourer and a Gardener. Their mother was from Strabane in Ireland. And it would be in Barrhead and neighbouring Thornley Bank that they would grow up with Malcolm joining the local team across the road, Arthurlie, at eighteen. On the other hand Bob started with Pollok, three miles up the road, also had a trial with Arthurlie but at eighteen was signed by Airdrieonians. It was a move that might be argued made him as immediately he was teamed up with Willie Russell and Hughie Gallacher, the arrival of whom in 1920 and 1921 respectively had taken the club from the bottom half of the table to second place in each of the two seasons from 1922, a position repeated in 1924 but now with the addition of the Cup. 

Bob McPhail would remain with Airdrieonians for three campaigns, the second-place finish replicated for a fourth time in 1925 and, despite the loss South of both Russell and Gallacher, once more in 1926. Even in 1927 with McPhail still just twenty-two but pivotal and an international for the first time,, the club was fourth. Only in 1927-8 did it start to slip and by then McPhail had also gone, to Ibrox as its team was rebuilt.

In fact that first cap probably did Bob few favours. Despite being alongside Gallacher once more It was a home defeat to England and he had competition. George Stevenson was still around. Alex James was emerging and preferred. It meant that, whilst he was capped again in 1928, he had really to wait until 1931 and the policy of English clubs of non-release to make his break-though. Nine of his caps would come in 1931, 1932 and 1933, after which there was a slight hiatus with six more from 1935 to 1937. 

In part that pause in representational honours was due to injury. It was also when in 1933 in Barrhead he married local-girl, Jessie Richmond. They would have two children, a daughter and a son, born in Pollok and Newton Mearns respectively, living comfortably in Glasgow's Southern Suburbs. That is until Jessie, whilst staying in Eaglesham, passed away in 1962 in hospital in Glasgow at the age of sixty-six, Bob outliving her by almost thirty years. He would die in 2000 in his ninety-fifth year in a nursing home, seemingly just a short distance from where the family had stayed fully eighty years earlier.