And it was as an inside-forward for Scotland's amateurs in 1928 that he first achieved international recognition and against England. As such he was also part of the Queen's Park team that that same year achieved its best ever League position of fifth, something that no doubt resulted the following year, and still amateur, to a full cap, against Ireland. That and the fact that he had completed his professional qualifications led to a dilemma, accountancy or professional football. He chose the latter, joining Hearts for three seasons where he attracted the attention of Manchester United, then in the English Second Division. 

He was to play thirty-four times in two seasons for the Old Trafford club, never really settling and in 1934 returned North of the Border to Dunfermline for four more seasons. Three were spent in First Division but when in 1937 the club was relegated he stayed on for a further year before hanging up his boots and at the age of thirty-one resuming the career, for which he had qualified a decade earlier. And, having moved to Paisley but marrying in Glasgow in 1940 to Henrietta Langmuir, he was to remain an accountant for the remainder of his working life, becoming a director of a soft drinks manufacturer, still in Paisley, his parents presumably following him across. However, the newly-weds were soon to settle in Ayrshire. Two daughters were born in Kilwinning in 1941 and 1944. Stewart would die in hospital in 1989 in Kilmarnock at the age of eighty-two, but with the death registered in Saltcoats, where Henrietta would also die in 2001 at the age of ninety-three.