Perhaps the move to Paisley was indeed familial. He was recorded there as a Steam Engine Maker Fitter. However, more likely it was football. After two seasons until twenty-one at home-town Johnstone he, a tirelessly opportunistic forward, had made the move to Abercorn for four more and a cap in 1891 before later that year being enticed South by Sunderland Albion. It was a Sunderland AFC spin-off under the founder of The Black Cats, James Allan, but would be dissolved in 1892, Buchanan moving on for two campaigns at Burnley in the First Division and then two more at Arsenal in the Second. 

Yet, it was with his next move to Southampton from 1896 that he really found his niche and perhaps his level. The South Coast club was in the Southern League and with his input was able to win it in 1897 and 1898. But Bob was now thirty-two and, whilst he managed a side-ways move to Sheppey Utd. for a season, his powers were waning. He would retire from playing in 1900 and clearly move at some point after that to London. He would die there in hospital in 1907 aged just forty-one and be buried in Willesden Cemetery with little initially known of the intervening six years. 

But there is one insight, at least into his home life in his last decade. In 1901 a Scots-born Robert Buchanan is recorded in Sheerness, so still on the Isle of Sheppey. He is working as an Engine Fitter once more and married to Southampton-born Margaret, the couple having a one-year old son, also Robert, born Sheerness. And then it became clear that she was Margaret MacKay and he had returned to the Solent to wed her in 1899, recorded not just as plain Robert Buchanan but specifically still Robert Blackburn Buchanan.