John Macaulay is by background complicated. His birth is recorded in Barrhead in 1860, at which point his Irish parents and he simply disappear until 1881, his father by then probably dead but if so then married to someone else, his mother recorded as living in Neilston with two younger children, both Neilston-born but with other surnames and John boarding in Barrhead, twenty-years old and working as an Iron Turner. 

And by then he was also turning out, a right-winger, for junior club, Barrhead Rangers, just before stepping up to the senior ranks with Arthurlie, with which he would stay for three seasons to 1884, representing Scotch Counties and winning a single cap. Indeed it was probably a combination of the 1884 cap and industrial unrest in Barrhead itself that probably encouraged him then to try his footballing luck Down South, specifically in Lancashire, and seemingly without an invitation. He went first to Padiham by Burnley, where other Scots he knew were already in place, finishing the 1883-4 season with three months there before moving on for three and then two more seasons up the valley with Burnley Union Star around two campaigns, 1887-9, with Brierfield, the village up the valley just a wee bit more. 

In that time too he effectively retrained as a "Beamer" in a local cotton mill and married. His wife was Grace Clarke, originally from Bradford, and they were to have ten children in all, moving to several houses all within a short distance in the town as the family first grew and then went its way and John moved into a decade or so of retirement. 

In fact it would be Grace, although younger, who would die first in 1941 at seventy-two but with John surviving her by just a year. His passing would be in 1942 on a farm in the hills above Nelson and Colne, nine miles up the valley from his adopted home-town.