Although he was born in Dundee, the eldest son of parents from the city, his father a shipyard-worker cum Grain Store Keeper, the family moved to Kilmarnock, when he was a baby. And it was there he learned the game, at 5 ft 51/2 ins tall a small but strongly-built right-half, but with neither of the town's senior teams but nearby Hurlford. And from there after just a season, one in which he nevertheless represented Ayrshire and gained a first and only cap, just a week after his nineteen birthday, he was signed by Nottingham Forest. 

His stay at the club, which then played at the Town Ground, proved, however, to be for just two seasons, seemingly starting happy but in the whole time making only seven first-team appearances. As a consequence it then seemed he was returned north, resigning for his first club but there there was clearly also a motive for the move other than football. In that same year, 1893, back in Kilmarnock he married local girl, Elizabeth King, settling into family life, back to his old trade as a plasterer and with form returning. As a result he was selected for Ayrshire once more, suggested for more international honours and after a season and a half was signed by Clyde in the Scottish League. 

Yet, fate quickly intervened. He received a serious leg-injury, from which, even at aged twenty-three so still very young, he never fully recovered or at least least not well enough for a come-back at the top level. So once more and this time not even after twelve months there was a drop-down, a return to Hurlford, this time for five campaigns until retirement in 1901 at the age of not quite thirty and probably because of continuing leg problems. Indeed those problems seem to have persisted even after hanging up the boots. In 1907, Hurlford arranged a benefit match for him because of his inability at the time to work. And in 1909, leaving his wife and their son behind, he took himself off to America, to Long Island in New York, for presumably more lucrative or easier work, plastering or otherwise, and did not return permanently until after the War.

However, at almost fifty he would now settle back into life in his home-town until his death at seventy in 1942, by then a widower, Elizabeth having passed away also in the town in 1939.