James Irons was born in 1874 in Leven, specifically in Scoonie, in Fife, which immediately begs the question, why did spend his whole of his five years in senior football with Queen's Park in Glasgow. In fast the explanation is fairly simple. His mother was from Scoonie but his father hailed from Caputh in Perthshire, had found work in on the Fife Coast, by 1881 as an Oil Mill Clerk further down it in Burntisland but had ambition. And it by 1891 taken him and the rest of family to Glasgow, where, living in Pollokshields, the father was a Commercial Accountant, actually working for the railways, and James, aged sixteen, had begun work as a Steam Engine Fitter. 

It was therefore at Pollokshields Athletic, according to one source, that James took his first junior footballing steps before at twenty-one and as a wing-half joining not the marginally nearer club, Third Lanark, but The Spiders, then playing at Cathkin Park. And from that same source he is also said to have played a few games for Morton, whilst according to another he was already with Queens Park from 1894. However, whatever the truth, by 1899 he had become a first-team regular and in 1900 was to received a single cap, just as the club had lost the 1900 Cup Final and for the 1900-01 finally would join the League.