However, the teacher and family would moved before 1871 to Glasgow and it was there and in Port Glasgow that Gemmell was educated and presumably had learned the game. That was before now at Glasgow University he was in receipt of a prize, a post, probably teaching English, at the Chilean Naval College, which, after working at a school in Glasgow for a short period, in 1892 took him to Valparaiso, then Chile's main city and still its main port. The city then had a substantial British merchant population, including families, a good number of whom were Scots. And it was there in 1877 that the Mackay and Sutherland school was founded again by Scots with by 1882 football on the curriculum. Furthermore, it seems that perhaps after a year, again teaching back in Scotland, in 1893 Andrew was to be recruited by none other than Mackay and Sutherland to teach mathematics and possibly sport and from where by 1898 he was back, this time permanently, at the Naval College and as "Superintendent of Games". 

It was also at about this time he met a Chilean-Irish girl, Alice Condon, from the southern city of La Lota by Concepcion. They would marry in 1901 but in the meantime in 1895 he had with the three other Valparaiso Scots been instrumental in the foundation of the Chilean Football Association (CFA), acting as its first Secretary. And, whilst the power in Chilean football would gradually move to Santiago and he for a while became more involved in athletics, he did continue an association with the game and indeed return to it. By 1908, now in his forties, he was a noted referee. In 1910 he was treasurer of the Valparaiso Football Association and, as Spanish-speaking Chileans became more involved with the game, he in 1913 became the last "British" president of the very organisation he had been instrumental in creating eighteen years earlier.     

However, at that point or soon after he would leave Valparaiso permanently, by 1916 moving to La Lota, administratively abandoning the game and living out the rest of his life there or thereabouts. He would die in Concepcion in 1950 at the age of eight-two, his wife out-living him by six years.