However, with him by 1935 captain of the Easter Road team it began once more to struggle and the crowd immediately to get on his back to such an extent that he requested to get away. Thus in September he was given a free-transfer and immediately signed by Aberdeen at the start of what would prove to be not a success but a slide leading him to leaving the game within four seasons. Albeit that Aberdeen would in 1937 finish second in the league and reach but lose the Cup Final, in just short of two campaigns at Pittodrie he hardly got a game and in the summer of 1937 joined Barnsley. But yet again he did not prosper, was on the move to Barrow for the rest of the season and, after that and unsuccessful trials at Forfar and Clapton Orient, had by the end of 1938 returned home.

As it happened, it would not matter much. Football would soon find itself suspended because of the outbreak the War and he was soon serving as an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy. And it was as such, or rather as both an AB and a Professional Footballer that he was recorded on his marriage, still in Edinburgh, in 1942 to Robina Bruce. 

They were to have their son, born in 1947. He would post-War work as a Labourer in a Chemical Works. That is until 1956 when at the age of just forty-seven he passed away, to be cremated at Warriston Cemetery, survived by Robina by thirty-six years. Her death would be in 1992 and her cremation also at Warriston.