However, with fifty-four starts he was clearly not commanding a regular First Team place and he spent 1920-21 at St. Bernard's outwith the League, transferred or on loan is not clear. That was before in 1921 St. Mirren from back in the League and Division One came in for him. At that point he was already almost twenty-eight and might not have been expected to have stayed long. He was also married with three children, two girls and a boy with another on the way, having in 1915, in Hamilton and still cutting coal wed Isabella Clelland. In fact he would stay at Love Street for six seasons, winning the Scottish Cup with them in 1926 and a cap in an away-victory over England, only moving on in 1927 because the club needed his transfer money. 

He went South to Bradford City. It was hardly a stellar move. He was already almost thirty-four, the club was then in the Third Division North but there may have been another motive. That year his and Isabella's youngest child, James, had died, aged six.  As it was Willie would spend only one season fewer at Bradford than he had at Paisley, making over one hundred and twenty league-starts at the former and seeing it into the Second Division to almost two hundred at the latter. And professionally on leaving the Yorkshire club just past his thirty-ninth birthday in late 1932 he still was able to play out the season at Newport County. Meanwhile, on a personal note Isabella had in 1929 and after a gap of eight years given birth to a further son, who they would also name James.