Waddell would spend eight seasons with The Spiders with guest appearances with the London, elite club, Corinthians, in 1892 and Edinburgh's St. Bernard's in 1893, when he also was a Scottish Cup winner. He would be a first team regular from nineteen and at twenty earn his first of six caps, scoring in the game against Ireland, including three against England, again a goal but all heavy defeats as the selectors still could not bring themselves to select the best players if they played Down South.  

However, in 1895 and still only twenty-five he was struck down pleurisy, from which he never really recovered enough for the top-flight although he continued to play friendlies until he thirty or so. Meantime he married Margaret Thomson, with whom he would have two daughters and, whilst he elder brother continued the catering business he took a very different course. He became and remained a partner in a machine-tool manufacturer based in Johnstone, his family moving to and settling in Elderslie, coincidently or not in a house backing onto the golf-course. And it was there in 1956 at a venerable eighty-five he passed away in 1956, survived, perhaps just, by his wife and buried in Woodside cemetery, Paisley.