A career of failing unrealistic expectations AT A GLANCE
Brilliant, without actually being good, has to be Shaun Johnson’s legacy as a New Zealand Warrior.
Where there’s talent and promise, there will always be big hopes and dreams. Plenty of fans and coaches pinned theirs on the halfback and wanted – even occasionally expected – great things from him.
Those expectations were maybe a little lofty on reflection.
Johnson, many believed, had the ability to lead the Warriors to a maiden NRL title. How could they not after the side reached the 2011 grand final, in just his first year of first-grade?
People assumed the team would continue to contend from there on, and Johnson was paid accordingly. In the end, the 2018 finals series was the only other time he took the team to the postseason.
You say took, because that’s the playmaker’s lot. Everyone in a rugby league team plays their part, but the job of winning games and competitions falls to the halfback and Johnson, for all the highlights and all the hype they generated, didn’t deliver.
Where the Warriors often needed a good, reliable player in the No 7 jersey, they instead got a brilliant one. It was spectacular but ineffective over the long haul and, on that basis, it would be hard to have him anywhere higher than seventh on the list of best all-time Warriors players.
It’s a subjective exercise and people will have their own favourites but there were several other players who, through their consistency and professionalism, contributed more to the club than Johnson.
Everyone’s very wise after the event and confident about claiming Johnson wasn’t the hardest worker at the club or the most enthusiastic trainer. Anyone who ever watched him play could tell you that and former team-mate Ngani Laumape didn’t make a secret of it when talking to his new coaches at the Hurricanes.
Laumape spent three years at the Warriors and was apparently amazed when he arrived at the Hurricanes to find the best players in the team were also the most conscientious. He never named names or pointed fingers at any old Warriors team-mates, just noted that Hurricanes such as Beauden Barrett and TJ Perenara weren’t succeeding by accident.
After a lazy, ineffective first season at the Hurricanes, Laumape was the franchise’s 2017 and 2018 player of the year and has now played 11 tests for the All Blacks.
Everyone’s different and maybe Johnson will respond better to the professional demands at his next club. Again, you wonder how his Warriors career might have panned out had success not come so easily in that first season.
But it did and, for all the natural ability, you feel Johnson now leaves the club without achieving what he might have. Only he will truly know what more he could have done.
In trying to rank the top 10 Warriors of all time, the trend that emerges is of players who got a lot out of comparatively little. At least compared to Johnson.
The best of them also had the ability to make the others around them better. That’s surely what a team sport is all about.
Johnson was more an individual and that’s maybe why he divides opinion so much.