John and  Archie's father had died when the boys were both very young, in about 1865, and their mother returned to Scotland to live in Kilmarnock and in 1880 there remarry. Thus the lads were brought up entirely in the footballing hotbed at the time that was south of the town, learning not only the Scottish game but geographically open to the earliest overtures that English clubs made to Scottish talent. And John, even in that hotbed, was something of a prodigy. He started at Kilmarnock Burns and in 1880 at barely seventeen was already a part of the Kilmarnock Athletic club, whose team over the next five years, especially 1883-84 would be so denuded by players going South that by 1885 it was dissolved. 

Indeed, John by 1883 had been part of that exodus, going first in 1883 to Great Lever by Bolton for two seasons, Preston for four and Derby County for ten. In fact he would continue to play until he was fifty, including two years from 1910 as a very early Diasporan player/coach in France at Roubaix, a role he had first taken on for seven campaigns at Watford in Southern League and would for one more more or less to the Great War in the same tier of the game at Mardy in South Wales. In all he would make over four hundred starts, be the foil and tutor of many important English players in a period when that country achieved some success against Scotland internationally and in 1889 with Preston win the English League but never the Cup.