A full-on season
MATTY JOHNS DOESN’T MISS BEING ON THE FIELD, THERE’S TOO MUCH ELSE TO DO
TI just knew coaching would not be good for me. I’ve got no doubt
here are some footballers-turnedcommentators who feel a tinge of nostalgia, even regret, for their own playing days whenever they see the teams run on to the field for a new season.
Fox League stalwart Matthew Johns is categorically not one of those people. It’s not just the brutal toll that more than a decade of playing five-eighth for the Newcastle Knights, Wigan Warriors, Cronulla Sharks, NSW and Australia took on his body.
There are also the mental scars from having the game he played and adored from his early childhood in NSW’s league-crazy Hunter Valley become all-consuming in an unhealthy way.
“I was always a guy who overanalysed and I really put myself through the wringer,” Johns says. “Some guys just put their boots on and go play but I’d go through game plans and I’d watch opponents and it was one of those dangerous things where the thing you love becomes an obsession. Towards the end it wasn’t becoming as much fun because you’re just pouring so much into it.”
Indeed, recognising those tendencies within himself was the main reason he chose a career in the media rather than following the well-worn route into coaching when he hung up his boots at the end of the 2002 season.
“I didn’t want to go back to that,” he says.
“I just knew coaching would not be good for me. I’ve got no doubt, I’d have found myself sleeping four or five hours a night and tearing everything apart as far as games are concerned. Having kids and a family but not really being there even when I am there. So, no, I don’t miss it.”
Coaching’s loss was the media world’s gain, with Johns carving out a successful post-football career that has featured stints on the NRL Footy Show, eight years of breakfast radio with Triple M in Sydney and more than a decade with Fox League, where he hosts The Late Show With Matty Johns, Sunday Night With Matty Johns Live and the Matty Johns Podcast. And with the NRL season kicking off tomorrow when the Parramatta Eels take on the Melbourne Storm, Johns says he’s been off the beers for the past few weeks to “freshen myself up, clear my head and get ready to go”. “It’s looking like it’s going to be a very, very good season,” he says.
“A lot of the struggling sides will improve. I wouldn’t say dramatically, but there’ll be improvement. I think a lot of the middle of the road sides will have enough improvement to worry some of the top sides. I still think there’s some blue-chip sides and then the next rung down but all in all, I think it’s going to be a very good competition.”
Johns says his “blue-chip” sides for 2023 include 2022 premiers the Penrith Panthers, their grand final opponent South Sydney Rabbitohs, and the Sydney Roosters. In the chasing pack he puts Melbourne Storm (“they have been eulogised five or six times in the last 15 years that their dynasty is over but they keep finding a way”) and “serious smokies”, the North Queensland Cowboys and Cronulla Sharks.
But all eyes will be on the first new team to enter the competition in 16 years, the Brisbane-based Dolphins. Johns says he has concerns about their “skinny roster” and says he’d consider their debut season a success if they can stay out of the bottom four. Their biggest asset he says, is having seven-time premiership coach Wayne Bennett in charge, and even if the wily veteran says he has nothing left to prove, Johns believes otherwise.
“He’ll say he doesn’t, but he always does,” Johns says with a laugh. “The champions in everything, when everyone says there’s nothing left to prove they convince themselves that there is. Wayne is like that … I think he likes being written off. It’s going to be a tough season, but he’s been through it all before.”
Johns is also working hard to expand his podcasting. In addition to his league podcast and the family one – born out of contractual obligations during Covid lockdowns – that he hosts with his wife Trish and their two sons Jack and Cooper, he’s about to launch a series featuring people who fascinate him from the sporting and non-sporting world.
“It’ll be actors, musicians, media people, things like that – people I just found interesting,” he says.
So far, he has recorded episodes with long-time friend Stan Grant, comedian Wendy Harmer, media personalities David Hill and Mark Fennessy, Hoodoo Gurus bass player Rick Grossman, Wallabies coach Eddie Jones, league player turned actor and director Matt Nable, former detective and top podcaster Gary Jubelin, and he’s hoping to add Kyle Sandilands and The Project host Waleed Aly.
And, as a man of very eclectic tastes – he’s a film and music fan as well as being a history buff and musical-theatre enthusiast – he also has a list of dream guests.
“It’s hard to go past those great rock stars,” he says. “People like Liam Gallagher and Noel Gallagher, I like their style … I’d love to do Joel Edgerton.”
While Johns says he loves recording the family podcast with his sons (“it’s a little bit like the Osbournes I suppose”), he’s also careful to stay at “double arm’s length” from their league careers. Older son Jack is with the Knights and his younger brother Cooper is set to make his debut for the Manly Sea Eagles after being released by Melbourne last year.
“If they ask me for any advice then yes, no problem,” says Johns. “But once again, I’ll come back to the fact that for me, it’s not healthy to immerse myself in the game. When the boys walk in the house, there’s no football unless they say ‘what do you think about this?’
“I wish them all the very best, but at the end of the day, it’s not my life and there’s nothing I can do.”
The Late Show with Matty Johns Live, Sunday Night with Matty Johns Live and the Matty Johns Podcast. Fox League is available to watch on Foxtel and Kayo Sports