John Stark was born in 1868 in Thornliebank, his parents also both from the then village. His father started as a bleach-field work, who by the time of his first son's birth was a foreman and would rise to be manager of the major, local calico print works, Thornliebank Co. Ltd.. John himself became a Print-Field Chemist and it was as such that he went to Brazil, probably arriving in 1903 at the age of thirty-five and clearly having been a player back in the old country. Perhaps he had been part of the Thornliebank team, the club formed in 1875, playing at a reasonable level until dissolution in 1908. Certainly it played for part of existence at Summerlea Park, the Starks living in Summerlea House in the 1890s. 

John Stark would lead the Bangu team for two seasons, probably returning to Scotland on leave in 1907 and certainly doing so in 1911, when he is recorded as single and staying, living "on private means", with his now widowed father in Thornliebank. But after that at the age of forty-three he seems simply to disappear from Britain, Brazil and elsewhere alike.