Outside Cricket
In the 1911 cricket off season Collins played rugby league for the Eastern Suburbs club. A five-eighth, Collins played alongside rugby league "immortal", Dally Messenger when the Eastern Suburbs club won its first ever premiership. In the 1912 he played in Brisbane and represented Queensland on three occasions.
Collins was an enthusiastic gambler, renowned by his team mates for finding any reason to bet. Mailey stated that Collins's haunts "were the racetrack, the dog track, a baccarat joint at Kings Cross, a two-up school in the Flanders trenches and anywhere a quiet game of poker was being played." His New South Wales team mate Hal Hooker remarked of Collins:
He would bet on anything—perhaps he was the original of the saying about flies crawling up the window. Waiting on a railway line he would bet on how many trains would pass through the opposite platform. how may carriages would be on the next one, how many carriage windows would be open. In a train he would produce a brass top stamped Put and Take—he paid or collected according to which way it fell when it stopped spinning.
Collins was known for all night poker sessions before going out to open the batting but refused to play against his fellow cricketers, seeing no challenge in taking money from novices. His gambling attracted some criticism and Collins was seen by many, including some cricket administrators, as an inveterate gambler.
He turned his interest in gambling into a career, taking out a bookmakers' licence for a period and he served as a steward at pony races in Sydney. Neither role appealed to him as much as acting as a commission agent for other bookmakers. Collins would "lay-off" for bookmakers over committed on certain horses, placing large bets carefully and with cool calculation. He won and lost two fortunes on the track and at one stage required the assistance of the New South Wales Cricketers Fund to support him and his invalid mother. He re-enlisted in the Australian Army during the Second World War, stationed at Victoria Barracks with the rank of sergeant.
In 1940, Collins, then aged 51, married 24-year-old Marjorie Paine, the daughter of a race steward. The marriage produced a son before ending in divorce eleven years later; a petition served by Collins was not defended by his wife. After his divorce, Collins continued to frequent gambling clubs at Kings Cross, participating in all-night poker sessions. Despite giving up smoking late in life, his lungs failed him and he died of cancer in 1959, aged 70.
Read more about this topic: Herbie Collins
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