However, football could be seen as just one third of a life that would take Lyall both east- and westward. In the Great War he served in the Royal Engineers to begin with in the UK and from 1917 first in South Africa and then in India, returning on demobilisation to Jarrow and clearly intent on picking up the pieces there. A plasterer to trade and went into the building business with his brothers. However, it is then said that his health began to fail, perhaps a result of India, and decision was made by him and his wife, he had in South Shields in 1902 married Elizabeth Martin, to emigrate with their two Sheffield-born children. 

In 1924 they went to Canada, he first but by 1927 had crossed the border to settle in Detroit. And it was there he would spend the rest of life, working to begin with as a plasterer once more but becoming a janitor for the city's National Bank. And whilst there is no evidence  of involvement in "soccer" his past prowess and reputation was clearly recognised. The nationwide obituaries on his death at the age of sixty-three in 1944, Elizabeth following him just a year later and still in Motor City, speak to that.