John's first organised football would be played with Victoria, a club with both junior and senior sections and which played on Glasgow Green. Thus he could have joined it from either Tradeston or Govanhill. However, the step-up was definitely from the latter. With the choice of Third Lanark or Queen's Park, the former closer, he chose the latter, making his first-team debut, a forward, in January 1885 just after his sixteenth birthday. It had been in an FA Cup tie and whilst he did not feature in the lost final in April he would not have long to wait for a medal and a winners' one at that. Nine months later he opened the scoring in victory over Renton in the Scottish Cup.

However, at that point and just before his twentieth birthday business took him south to London, where he worked, initially at least, as the representative for the family business. There he joined London Caledonians, also to be invited to turn out for the Corinthians, whilst on visits back to Glasgow featuring still for the Hampden side in the the 1892 Cup Final and in 1894. But it was about then that injury brought playing at the top-flight to an end, with him becoming a Caledonians committee member.

John Lambie was to remain in London for the rest of his life. He would marry late, in about 1910, by when he was working as a journalist, his bride the London-born, widowed Emma Irwin. She had a daughter from her previous marriage and the three  of them would settle in North London, where John on Christmas Day 1923 at the age of just fifty-five would pass away. He would be buried in Highgate Cemetery (East), survived by Emma for almost a quarter of a century. She would die in 1949 and be buried in Highgate also.