As for Jim himself, from a birth in Kilmarnock and no really deep sporting involvement at an early age in Scotland his path in life would lead him to represent the United States at soccer on four occasions and with notable success, all at the first World Cup in 1930 before a rest of a life spent playing in Britain, and then coaching on the other side of the Atlantic in New England and, finally in New Jersey. 

James "Jim" Brown had been born on the last day of 1908. His father was a House Painter from Kilmarnock, his mother from Partick in Glasgow but brought up in Troon. They had had a relationship for the best part of a decade but had only married in 1905 and, having served in the Great War, in about 1920 he left for the USA and at nineteen, having been brought up back in Troon, Jim, by then a Rivetter to trade, went in search of him. 

His father was by then staying in Westfield in New Jersey and it is there that Jim first settled and joined the neighbouring town's amateur football club, where his previously untapped talent emerged. It was over the next seasons to 1932 to lead to then playing, as a winger, professionally in Newark, in New York and back to Newark including in 1930 selection for the US squad for Uruguay and the first World Cup, where he played every game as the Americans reached but lost an infamous semi-final. And it would also lead to him marrying Mary Cormack, Scots-born in Aberdeen, who had arrived with her parents in the USA in 1910 aged seven and was working as a waitress back in the Big Apple. The wedding took place in 1931 and they were to have three children, only one of whom seems to have survived to adulthood. And finally Jim's footballing performances in the USA and the World Cup had by then also led to attention from clubs back in the United Kingdom, resulting to him in 1932 at the age of twenty-four signing for Manchester United.

In fact his two seasons at United were, due in part to his Players' Union support and activity, only a partial success, despite promotion, and in 1936 he moved sideways to Brentford. But there too he faced the same problems and was confined mainly to the reserves before a drop in successive seasons of a division to Tottenham and then to Guildford City for four seasons with the Southern League title taken in his first campaign.  

However, in 1941 Brown hung up his boots and returned to Troon until 1948 before it was back to the United States, this time settling in Connecticut and where his eldest sister was already living in Greenwich, the town across the state-line from Port Chester. There he was involved in founding Greenpoint United and coached until retirement. But it would be, firstly, back in New Jersey that he would pass away, in Berkeley Heights, close to Westfield, and, secondly, in Ayrshire be buried. The year was 1994, almost after in 1886 admittance to the American National Soccer Hall of Fame. He was on death aged eighty-five, survived by Mary, who passed away in 1997 again in Berkeley Heights.