And he would grow up entirely in the then independent town and at eighteen said from Partick Elm to have joined Partick Thistle for two stays, effectively a decade and a half, with just a season at Queen's Park for 1890-91. It was as the Jags were just becoming the local team as Partick F.C. folded. And it was in that first period that he became the club's first international, three times over, consecutively all against Wales, scoring five times, four of the goals in five to no reply in the 1890 fixture. Yet that was to be it as Scotland scrabbled to find a settled centre-forward, was for the first time regularly defeated by England until the emergence of Bob McColl in 1896 and Paul continued to feature for Thistle until 1899, including its election to the League's new Second Division when it was created in 1893 and promotion to the top-flight in 1896.

Meantime life outwith football continued for Willie. In 1895 he married Jane Thomson in Anderston. They were to have three children, two daughters and a son, with the family staying first in Anderston itself and then across the river in Govan, indeed just by Ibrox. And it was there in 1911 that he was to fall fatally ill, his passing somewhat curiously described as simply "natural causes". He was just forty-five years old, survived by Jeanie by twenty-three years, she dying in neighbouring Plantation in 1934 at the age of sixty-four.