Collins was also a successful rugby league footballer, winning the 1911 NSWRFL season's grand final with the Eastern Suburbs club.

After his retirement from cricket, Collins used his gambling knowledge to start a career in horse racing, working as a bookmaker and commission agent.

He played at five-eighth in Eastern Suburbs' grand final win of the 1911 NSWRFL season alongside the great Dally Messenger.

He served in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and later on the Western Front, carting ammunition to the artillery shelling the German lines.

Despite Collins's rank, Field Marshal Birdwood, the former commander of the Australian Corps, asked him to take over the captaincy for the remainder of the tour.

[10][11] On their way home the AIF team played ten matches in South Africa, eight of them first-class, remaining undefeated in this section of the tour.

While Jack Gregory relished the conditions, the local newspapers acclaimed Collins as the finest player in the touring team.

[15] On arrival back in Australia, the AIF team played three first-class matches, defeating the reigning Sheffield Shield champions New South Wales and Victoria.

Within a few months of the team's dissolution, Collins made his Test début, along with his AIF team-mates, Gregory, wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield and the batsmen Johnny Taylor and Nip Pellew.

[18] Collins scored another century in the Third Test at the Adelaide Oval, batting 258 minutes for 162, helping Australia to a 119 run victory.

[3] Batting for over four and a half hours with what Wisden described as "inexhaustible patience", Collins scored 40 runs in Australia's only innings to force a draw.

[23] In the second Test of the series, Collins scored a remarkable double century (203) on the matting pitch at the Old Wanderers ground in Johannesburg, unearthing a range of shots he had rarely used.

[26] Batting with a young Victorian in his début Test, Bill Ponsford, Collins sheltered him from the brilliant swing bowling of Maurice Tate.

"[28] In the Second Test at Melbourne, chasing 600, the English pair of Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe batted throughout the third day for an unbroken partnership of 283.

The gamble paid off with Mailey dismissing Tich Freeman and Gregory removing Gilligan at the other end to win the Test by eleven runs and secure The Ashes.

[29] Collins attracted a great deal of negative attention by using the inexperienced Arthur Richardson as a main strike bowler at the expense of the likes of Mailey and Clarrie Grimmett.

A five-eighth, Collins played alongside rugby league "immortal", Dally Messenger when the Eastern Suburbs club won its first ever premiership.

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.

"[28] His New South Wales teammate Hal Hooker remarked of Collins: He would bet on anything — perhaps he was the original of the saying about flies crawling up the window.

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.

[28] He turned his interest in gambling into a career, taking out a bookmaker's licence for a period and he served as a steward at pony races in Sydney.

Collins would "lay-off" for bookmakers over-committed on certain horses, placing large bets carefully and with cool calculation.

[3] 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.

The marriage produced a son before ending in divorce eleven years later; a petition served by Collins was not defended by his wife.

[34] After his divorce, Collins continued to frequent gambling clubs at Kings Cross, participating in all-night poker sessions.

[3] His patience was renowned, with the contemporary cricket writer Ray Robinson remarking "[Collins] had an implacable trench warfare style that in difficult times earned admiration from his own side, put bowlers on the road to exasperation and sent onlookers through the doors of bars.

"[37] Collins was undemonstrative, expecting his fieldsmen to look at him after every delivery and adjust their position in response to his slight hand movements or even a bent finger.