It meant that when football took off in Glasgow the elder Neill brother was staying just a mile from the Queen's Park and less still from the first Hampden Park, where at the former he, a full-back, began to turn out for the club of the same name from 1872 and at the latter from the following year. However, he was noticeably not in the Scotland cum Queen's Park team that would face England in November 1872, in fact only coming into the national team in 1876, by then aged twenty-two. 

But from then on he was one of the four or so full-backs, who would be Scotland's final line of defence, he playing on either flank, captaining twice. That is until May 1880 and the Glasgow Charity Cup final. There he led his club to victory, albeit on a replay, over Rangers but received a knee injury that at just twenty-six ended a playing career, which, in addition to the five caps, had also included four Scottish Cups, the last just three months earlier, the first having been in 1874.

On hanging up his boots it is said Robert spent a couple of years in South America but had returned to Scotland by 1888. In fact there may have been another, or rather two factors that might have come into play and brought him home far earlier. By 1878 he had already lost his father, with in 1882 his mother passing away, both at Bellevue House, he sixty, she just fifty-one, Quintin by then aged sixteen, a clerk, still living at home and the youngest of the siblings just nine. 

Quintin Neill was to join Queen's Park at twenty in 1886, no doubt with the recommendation of his brother. Also a full-back he would play for the club for two seasons, getting into the first team in 1888 and then doing something unprecedented, for Hampden anyway. He turned professional with Lincoln City, moving to the city, recorded as an accountant, there making well over 100 starts and remaining until 1894. Meantime, Robert has in 1888 married, his wife, Janet Johnston, living in Glasgow but originally from Tarbert in Argyll. By then he was working as a Commercial Traveller. They were to have four children, two of whom survived, he continuing as a salesman, latterly for an ironmonger before opening a business making machinery.