However, Alex clearly fell out with Clyde, leaving after that second Cup Final and taking a year out before returning to the game in 1914 but at Clydebank on its foundation and election to the Second Division. It was clearly not ideal timing but under him the club was elected to the top-flight in 1917, finished ninth that season, when the league resumed in 1919-20 finished fifth before spreading his wings. His next job was four years at Hibernian, moving the family, he had married in 1899 in The Gorbals, to Edinburgh. The Leith club dipped at first but in 1924-25 not only finished third above Celtic but that year and previous one reached but lost two Cup Finals. It led to interest from Down South and Alex Maley took the English shilling, for two seasons from 1925 at newly-relegated Crystal Palace. Results were steadied and then improved but after a bad start to his third season he resigned, returned north for a final few months at Clydebanl once more and then stepping back becoming a director but once more at Hibs and working as a journalist  And it would be as a retired newspaper-man that he would die in 1949 in Glasgow's Royal Infirmary, aged seventy-four.