George "Geo" McWattie, also known as Joe, was the son of a prominent citizen of Arbroath, a tobacco manufacture. He, himself, would work in insurance for much of his life, also playing in his younger years, as a goalkeeper, always as an amateur. He was born in 1875, schooled in Dundee, there began as a forward but switched to 'keeping as a teenager, stepping up from the local, junior game in his home-town, to the Gayfield club at nineteen in 1894. 

But work took him in 1898 to Edinburgh and there he would join Hibernian, in 1901 gain two caps, then, with in between one season in Glasgow with Queen's Park, move across town to Hearts.