Moreover, during his time in Airdrie he won from what was an average team nine caps including the first two matches Scotland played abroad, again captaining, four times, once against England, twice abroad, a right full-back of power and "tenacity" despite being just 5ft 5 ins tall. 

Jimmy Crapnell would retire from first-team football at Motherwell in 1933. He might well have played on beyond thirty-one but for a series of annoying injuries. Indeed he did come back the following season for a series of reserve-team games but no more. But it was not his last activity in the game. After World War Two he turned to management, briefly at Alloa and then for six years at St. Johnstone, moving the family to Perth until at the age of fifty he returned to his home-town and his initial profession. And it was in Paisley that he lived out the rest of his life, dying in Dykebar Hospital at the age of eighty-eight in 1991, predeceased by Rachel by fifteen years, and buried in the town at Woodside Cemetery.