Warriors star finds new focus

THE sight of Shaun Johnson in a hospital again last week might well have been enough to send even the most battlehardened Warriors fan into a tailspin, but this time it was nothing to do with his knee ligaments. Instead the halfback – who’s due to make his injury return against the Sea Eagles today – was looking to life beyond league and trying his hand as a cameraman on the set of Shortland Street. Johnson already has form on the nation’s favourite soap after a cameo last year, but on Thursday he spent a shift on ‘‘work experience’’ at the South Pacific Pictures studio firmly behind the lens. Johnson said he’d had to disappoint the Shortland Street casting director, who had pulled him into her office and tried to coax him back onto the small screen, and he was adamant his future work plans didn’t include acting. ‘‘She’s the one that gets everyone in, and she just kept saying ‘oh, but you’ve got the face for it’,’’ he said. After his morning on the job, Johnson said he wasn’t quite ready to hang up the boots just yet and the editors told him to go to film school before they would let him touch their controls.

‘‘I don’t see why I can’t start the process now of learning, and taking some courses,’’ he said, admitting that after six years of professional sport, time was ticking.

Moving into a job in television was a serious option for Johnson, after his sporting career ended, he said.

The Warriors had organised the set visit, and Johnson said the club was encouraging its players to seek out postsport options GLENN MCCONNELL