Kinnaird had been born in London, in 1847, the son of a Scottish aristocratic family that had made and would make more money in banking in London. Its original company, Ransome & Co., would eventually from 1896 be consolidated into Barclays Bank, today's Barclays plc. At fourteen in 1861 he was sent to Eton and it was there he, having played a form of football at prep-school, first came in contact with its iteration of the game, transferring his interest on leaving at eighteen to the association version, it having been formalised in 1863 with the foundation of the FA itself. Old Etonians F.C. had been formed in 1865 as Kinnaird left the school to go up to Cambridge. In 1866 he chose the alumni team that faced the equally public-school Wanderers, that would become his other club of choice. By 1868 he was a member of the the FA Committee. Nine year later he became FA Treasurer and in 1890 President, taking over from Francis Marandin, another to be English-born but Scottish-buried, and before the turn of the century overseeing considerable adaption, indeed modernisation, of the game and its rules.

Both Marandin and Kinnaird achieved there administrative positions on the back of significant playing careers. In the latter's case it was as a quick, skilful but also formidably, robust opponent. They were characteristics that saw him face England just once, albeit in one of only two defeats in fifteen international seasons, but reach nine FA Cup Finals, the last in 1883 at the age of thirty-six, winning five.