Nevertheless, as he began to make his footballing mark in his mid-teens it was first with Leith Harp, then Edinburgh Thistle, playing on The Meadows themselves, before finally in 1885 at not yet seventeen joining Hibernian, with which at eighteen he won the Scottish Cup in 1887 and from where at nineteen his first cap. In that match with an already established reputation for speed, dribbling, passing and shooting he scored as one of the central forwards, at which point it was inevitable that newly-formed Celtic would take an interest. In fact in 1888 he would be one of three who would move across. 

However, with Scottish football still not officially professional there was bound to be temptation for players with credentials fully established in very the top flight to move South for potentially better money and for English clubs to do the tempting. In Groves case that would mean two seasons at Parkhead and two more caps before, somewhat unusually, West Bromwich, later a very "English" team, would come in. 

In fact Groves' time at the Baggies' then ground of Stoney Lane was to be at best variable. In the League the club had in 1891, at the end of his first season, to apply for re-election and, whilst in 1893 it finished safely in eighth, 1891-2 had been sweet and sour. Finishing twelfth of fourteen re-election would again have been required had not the team, against the odds in beating arch rivals Aston Villa, taken the FA Cup. Indeed it was enough for Villa not just to sign Willie but be prepared to pay the very first £100 transfer-fee to do so and with immediate reward. At the end of the 1893-4 season the League title would be the Aston's club for the first time.

Aston Villa would in the 1880s be the dominant team in England. More League titles would be won in 1896, 1897 and 1899, the Cup in 1895 and 1897. But it would be done without Groves. As the 1894-5 season began, he aged twenty-six, the first signs of deteriorating health began to show themselves. Indeed he even returned to Edinburgh, it is said to die but rest had its effect. He was able to open a tobacconist business in the city and even to put his boots on again. He had a few games over a season back at Hibs. He played a couple of games for Celtic. He was even in 1897 persuaded to go South once more to Rushden in the Midland League, which ended in 1899 with him in hospital in Northampton. 

But his second period in England had been clearly done via Middlesbrough because in 1901 Groves was living in Wellingborough by Rushden as a Retired Football Player. And he was with Irish-born Catherine, seven years his senior, and six children, five born in Cleveland or thereabouts, the eldest fifteen, so born in 1885, and the sixth, Lewis, Groves' father's name, just a year old and born locally.