Anyone who saw James Collins’ remarkable performance at Adams Park on September 14, 2008 would have sworn they had born witness to the birth of a Worcester legend.
For all the snarling, over-my-dead-body displays so characteristic of regular openside Pat Sanderson, that afternoon Collins took the Warriors No.7 shirt into an entirely different stratosphere.
Ranged against a feted Wasps back-row of James Haskell, Joe Worsley and Tom Rees the 22-year-old marked just his second Premiership performance with a showing of such ferocity and courage the England triumvirate were mere slaughtered lambs.
Wasps were champions, Rees was the brightest star in the Red Rose constellation and no-one – but no-one – took, or indeed takes, liberties with the fearsome Worsley.
Yet it was a blue-shirted blond bombshell who blew rucks, marmelised ball carriers, harvested turn-overs and left the home back-row looking utterly middle-aged, as if they’d wandered upstairs and forgotten why.
But the human body can only withstand so much and after 50 minutes that would have left that legendary masochist Lewis Moody wondering what Collins had against himself, the youngster trudged off, utterly spent.
Collins played a Herculean part in the visitors’ 11-10 victory, sealed at the death by Loki Crichton’s penalty and whilst the Samoan took the headlines, the Sixways coaches all lauded their young flanker. It was perhaps his finest hour in a Worcester shirt.
It would have seemed almost inconceivable at the time but less than three years later Collins has made just 19 more starts and found the career that promised to make him a star has stalled in the sidings.
He is no longer at Worcester, indeed he is no longer at any professional rugby club nor doing any exercise at all, instead his time is spent seeking a solution to the headaches that wrecked his summer move to Sale.
“I am getting them doing nothing,” Collins, now 25, says. “I have got this constant pressure in my head that does not seem to want to go. You ask me how I am and in the past couple of days it’s been fine but the six or seven days before that I had a headache all day, every day.”
What is known about Collins’ condition is that it started after he was kneed in the jaw in the Championship match with Nottingham in March.
The Birmingham-born forward was knocked cold for a minute, taken to hospital and scanned and X-rayed to the point of distraction. However, whenever he tried to train the pounding returned.
By that time he had agreed a two-year deal at Edgeley Park but with no sign of improvement they reluctantly withdrew the contract earlier this month.
“I have nothing but good things to say about Sale, I was in constant contact with them, they were very open and honest with me and Steve Diamond and a club doctor said they needed to see an improvement by the end of May.”
None was forthcoming.
“I had moved into a flat in Manchester and my girlfriend had planned to do a law conversion course up there. But this injury has affected us both, she’s had to put that on hold.
