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HOME TOOTHS OF ORIGINAL FANG STAR
Pamela Whaley
Lindsay Collins used to get nightmares over the day he lost his two front teeth.
With a hint of astonishment, he often laughs with his brother Sam and sister Hunter about how lucky they are they didn’t lose more.
Life was different back then. They were three kids, climbing trees higher than their house, riding wheelie bins down their suburban street in Brisbane Northside to keep themselves entertained.
And on the day he knocked out his teeth, there was a hill, a pushbike and a freshly dumped pile of mulch perfect for a makeshift jump.
What would any 12-year-old boy do?
“We were crazy as kids, we often talk about the shit we used to get up to, it’s crazy some of us are still alive and have all of some our limbs,” the Sydney Roosters prop tells The Daily Telegraph ahead of Saturday night’s sudden death clash with Cronulla.
“We used to live halfway down a hill, but we’d go up the top and go up even further up that person’s driveway and fly down on a bike. There was a road at the end, and similar to a skateboard, you’d put your feet out to slow down and if not, the grass would stop you. You just hoped a car wouldn’t come.
“Dad was doing a bit of landscaping so he had a whole heap of mulch dropped off at the house, we turned it into a jump. I ended up going face first into the driveway, just in footy shorts.
“Head to toe scraped up, it knocked out my two front teeth. They put them back in, but then one went black and one is still going dark, eventually I’ll have to get it all repaired after footy. I used to have nightmares on it for ages. It was stupid.”
Rugby league is a brutal sport. He’s not alone.
Collins’ unique grin — one wonky tooth and another missing altogether — is one of a few in the game.
Dolphins prop Mark Nicholls showed off his missing chompers over the weekend, while Cronulla skipper Cam McInnes is famous for his smile too. But losing teeth is a common nightmare, which is obviously difficult in reality.
“I didn’t even really care too much about the tooth, I wasn’t really self conscious or anything, and I’ve always been a bit like that, you can’t control what you can’t control,” Collins said. “In high school it was probably a little bit embarrassing, as a teenager trying to talk to girls, but my wife doesn’t seem to care so that’s all that matters.”
More importantly, his accident didn’t stop their daredevil antics on that suburban street.
“There was one pine tree out the front of our house and we used to climb all the way to the top of it, and the further you would climb it would sway. You’d be well above your house, two storeys, three storeys up. I look back and think, what if I fell off? We would have been dead,” he said.
“It’s crazy. We used to ride the wheelie bins down the driveway and go all the way up. It was good old days.
“I look at my daughter now and think, you can’t be doing that. It was different times I guess.”
Collins and his wife Kaylah live in Matraville with their daughter Georgia, who turned one in June.
Eventually, he’d like to give her the same freedom he had as a kid, with more space somewhere outside of Sydney. At 29 he’s closer to the back-end of his career than the start, and life beyond football is something he thinks about.
“We’re out at Matraville so we’ve got a bit more space out there,” he says. “It’ll be nice eventually when it’s all said and done to have a bit of land and kick a ball as hard and far as you want and not have to worry about it going into a neighbours yard.
“I don’t want to leave the Roosters, but after it’s all said and done my wife and I are both from Brisbane, and the area we’re from there’s still some acreage around there so it would be nice.”
Collins and Kaylah have been together since they were in high school.
Adding Georgia to the family last year changed him for the good, mixing up his normally rigid routine and helping him become more flexible in the later stages of his career.
“I used to be so structured and routine based, and if my routine wasn’t going the way I wanted it to it frazzled me a bit,” he says. “The last year or so I had to throw everything out and take it as it comes. When I can fit stuff in I will, but it’s not a priority. I’ve learned in the last year, to be a bit more relaxed, which helps you enjoy life a bit more. I can get a bit too serious sometimes, but it’s been a good balance.”