As for football he began with Glencraig Celtic, which suggests that the family might briefly have lived in Lochgelly/Ballingry, then would turn out for Wellesley Juniors back in Buckhaven before, he aged just twenty-one, Glasgow Celtic came in for him. And that was where he remained, apart from a short early loan-spell to Ayr United, until 1934, in the process winning one League and three Cups. 

Meantime in 1926 he had married, his wife, Isabella Semple, a farmer's daughter from Dalserf, which is where the ceremony took place. And they were to settle in Lanarkshire in nearby Ashgill and have one son. Indeed, it would be in that same area that the family would remain even after Alec had left Parkhead at the age of thirty-two, had three more years at Dunfermline Athletic and then somewhat bizarrely, a final year in the far north with Wick Academy. And on the face of it equally out of left-field on final retirement the former miner with the cultured right foot seems to have turned to growing, perhaps on Semple-family land, vegetables or is it fruit. Certainly on his death in 1975 in Larkhall, his body to be cremated at Daldowie Crematorium in Uddingston, and with Isabella having predeceased him by five years, aged sixty-one, whilst living at the same address, he is recorded as a seventy-three year-old "Tomato-Grower (Retired)",