So how did it all come about? The Irish birth and baptism was because his father was a soldier, serving there until at least 1906. Then the initial Dumbarton connection remains unknown but by 1911 the whole family was staying there, father finding work in a local engine works, first as a Clerk and then a Foreman. As to Harry he began with junior football with Kirkintilloch Rob Roy before stepping up at twenty-one to home-town Dumbarton for three seasons and gradually making himself a regular. He went from thirteen to thirty-three starts before at twenty-four in 1923 moving up from the Second to the First Division with Partick Thistle.

And again at Firhill he would stay three seasons, make enough of an impression to win, as Irish-born and not therefore eligible for Scotland, the first of a trio of caps and once more be both a regular and appreciated enough that when he moved on he was awarded a benefit. But the next move was curious and probably entirely down to money. Although in 1923 he had married Dumbarton-girl, Jessie Martin, he chose to go with a Jags team-mate to try their hands in then booming American soccer. Both would find employment with the New York works team, Indiana Flooring, later New York Nationals, and for four years their careers ran in parallel. It included after a year breaking their US contracts to sign for Hearts, have those contacts cancelled on pressure from the American Football Association via FIFA and the acceptance of its validity by the new SFA, Bob Campbell. It was an episode that was to set off another whole chain of events that would eventually contribute to the implosion of US professional soccer by 1931 but by then the pair of them had played their parts in the taking in 1928 of the National Challenge Cup and in 1929 the American Soccer League title and the Lewis Cup.        

However, Harry and Alex's times in America came to an end in 1930 and both returned home, the latter joining Chelsea and Harry Shelbourne in an Irish League that was rapidly professionalising. And there as his new club won the Irish League he would go straight into the Free State team for two more caps in 1931, go back to Dumbarton for two, again stalwart, seasons with his home-town club and then return to Ireland, this time  to Cork for at thirty-four a final season and a final trophy, the FAI Cup.    

Thus it was that life after a decade and a half of football should have been smooth but sadly in 1938 Jessie was to die. Harry was almost forty and it would be another three years, by then working as a Crane-man in an Engine Works, perhaps the same as his father, before he would meet and marry local widow, also Jessie, Jessie Swan. And they would continue to live in the town until Harry's death at eighty-four in 1983, survived by his widow for two decades. She would pass away still in the town in 2003, aged ninety-two.