However, the family would move to Hutchesontown and it was there that he learned the game, playing, before Rugby Park, as a junior first for nearby Shawfield and then for Rutherglen Glencairn, whilst working as a brass-moulder. Meantime, he may well already have met Agnes Gillespie. They may even have grown up together and, whilst in 1930 she with her wider family appears to have left for the USA, she, but seemingly not they, would return. 

The reason for the parting of the ways between Nibloe and Kilmarnock had been a consequence of the 1932 Final. He was clearly expecting a benefit. It did not come. Instead he was transferred, forcing him leave his Scottish comfort zone and perhaps prompting him to propose, possibly long-distance. Whatever the background the result was that he and Agnes were married in Glasgow in 1933, eventually settling in Sheffield.