And there at the first Cathkin Park he was to stay for the next seven seasons, highly praised for his pace, mobility and shot, attributes that were to win him a first cap in 1885, a second in 1886 and two more in 1887, the last in an away-win against England, and finally in 1889 in the year before his retiral from playing, the Scottish Cup. But that was to be far from his last involvement with the game. He then turned to refereeing until 1905, taking charge in 1893 of The Scottish League versus The Football League, in 1894 the Scottish Cup Final, in which Rangers beat Celtic, and after an understandable gap the Ireland-England international of 1900. 

Meantime, he was working as a Spirits Salesman and had been married since 1882, his wife, Mary Sinclair from Hutchesontown. They were to have four children, the last in 1895, but in 1897 at the age of just thirty-eight Mary would die, at which point one of her younger sisters would step in to keep house, for the six of them. 

However, John would in 1902 remarry, his bride not the sister-in-law but the twenty-one year old Helen McLaughlin. They were themselves to have two boys, he going back to his former trade of Cotton Twister and the family staying in Govanhill and then Dalmarnock. That is until 1923 with John's first family now grown-up the decision was taken to leave for America. Father and eldest son from his second family arrived first and to Philadelphia. Mother and second son followed on, John finding work as a Watchman in a hosiery mill, the boys working also. In fact the two boys would remain in the USA but, for whatever reason, their mother and father would return. By 1936, two years before Johnny's death, they were back in Glasgow, indeed in Hutchesontown, he passing away in 1938 at the age of seventy-nine, but back in Govanhill, recorded as a Spirits' Salesman (Retired).