[2][3] When the University team withdrew from the VFL competition in 1915, he was transferred to the Melbourne Football Club, but never played a game due to his enlistment in the First AIF.

[7] His younger brother, John Harbinger Gibbs (1897-1917), also attended Caulfield Grammar School,[8] and also served in the First AIF.

[17][18] On the way home to Malvern on 12 July 1919, his father boarded a Swanston Street cable tram, and was badly injured when he overbalanced and fell from the back platform of the rapidly moving cable tram, upon which he was standing, as it swung round the curve from St Kilda Road into Domain Road, South Yarra.

His head hit the roadway, and he sustained a fractured skull, He was taken to the Caulfield Military Hospital, where he died of his injuries on the following day (13 July 1919).

[34] He played well in his first match, against Essendon, on 27 April 1912 (round one),[35] with the reporter remarking that, "although yet only a boy, he marked and kicked so well that he gives great promise".