His time would, however, come starting the following year when The Well reached the Scottish Cup Final only to lose to Celtic by a single and soft goal but he at the pivot anointed with praise for the way he kept the great Jimmy McGrory under wraps. He would then become club captain, make in all almost three hundred starts and be the organisational king-pin of the team, particularly its off-side trap. Indeed, with the outbreak of War as he was about to turn just twenty-nine, so in more or less his prime, further international recognition might have been on its way. 

Thus the war-years could be said to have deprived Johnny of a potentially golden last few years on-field, Instead he served first as a Special Constable in Glasgow and worked in an aircraft factory, coming to the conclusion that he had hung up his boots. However, he did as hostilities came to an end manage a few games for Morton and then Clapton Orient Down South, where he also coached briefly to 1946.

But then it seems it was a return to Scotland and no mention until eventually in 1958 he married back and in Clydebank. His bride was Mary McBride or MacBride. He was aged forty-six, she, a local girl, a decade younger. They are said to have had one son and clearly lived quietly. That is until John would pass away still in Clydebank in 1976, a fortnight shy of his sixty-fifth birthday, and Mary would there also follow him in 1983 at the age of sixty-two.