Andrew Johns sat on the sideline of Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium – then Telstra Dome – on the night of July 5, 2006 and felt his heart break.
He was forced to watch helplessly as his beloved New South Wales blew a 14-4 lead to lose the State of Origin decider to Queensland in a 10-minute nightmare.
Andrew Johns in action for the Blues. nna\cdesilva
The Blues looked to be home and hosed. Then a Johnathan Thurston linebreak in the 71st minute set up a long-range Brent Tate try to make it 14-10. Two minutes later, Blues fullback Brett Hodgson threw a rank, wild pass out of dummy-half that hit the deck and was scooped up by Darren Lockyer, who scored under the posts. The conversion made it 16-14 and the man known as Joey could not believe it.
“It ripped my guts out,” the eighth Immortal tells Nine.com.au in a candid sit-down interview, two decades after he transitioned from Origin hero to sideline pundit.
“I was like, ‘I should be out there’. In my mind I was still fit, ready to play.”
It’s been 20 years since Johns swapped the Steeden for a Channel Nine microphone and he reckons it hasn’t gotten much easier.
Another video of him during last week’s thrilling NSW victory over Queensland at Accor Stadium went viral when he reacted to the Blues bombing a sure try late in the comeback.
It was just another insight into the man who many believe to be the most passionate fanatic to bleed blue.
Joey ‘pressured’ to retire
While Johns continued to play NRL for Newcastle in 2006, his Origin career had been ended by an agreement with the Knights he would live to massively regret.
He had steered the Blues to a series victory in 2005 – their third in a row – after missing the first game through injury, which Queensland won.
Then a new contract with Newcastle came with a brutal caveat – he was allowed to play a handful of games for Warrington in the Super League at the end of the 2005 NRL season, but it meant he had to retire from representative football.
He reluctantly agreed.
“I was disappointed I was sort of pressured into retiring by the Knights,” he tells Nine.com.au.
“If I had it all over again I’d say to them ‘no’.”
And so it was that he found himself prowling the sidelines during that fateful 2006 series, which would kickstart an eight-year Queensland dynasty.
Andrew Johns and Braith Anasta celebrate the 2005 series win. Getty
“Horrible, it was horrible. I felt helpless just on the sideline, watching them going, ‘come on, you’ve got to be doing this, got to be doing that’,” he says.
“What hurts even more is that was the start of the eight-year dominance, so that period was so hard.
“That eight-year dominance will never be done again. Look at the (Queensland) team, there was four or three future Immortals in that team.
“It wasn’t meant to be I suppose.”
The secret comeback bid
Johns drops a nugget of gold as he sits and spills the beans on the unceremonious ending to a brilliant career.
After watching the Blues blow it in 2006, he tried to make a State of Origin comeback the following year.
He was in cahoots with Mark Bouris, the boss of Wizard Home Loans, which was the major NSW Blues sponsor at the time.
Andrew Johns was still playing outstanding footy for the Knights in the 2006 finals series. Cameron Spencer
“No one really knows, I was coming back in 2007. I was going to play again for NSW,” he reveals.
“That hasn’t really got out. I met with Mark Bouris, we were chatting about it and he said ‘would you come back and play?’.
“I said I’d give it some thought. I actually said if the Knights let me, which I’d go to them and say I’m playing… but then there were some signs in the off-season, my body was breaking down and then I hurt my neck again.
“In my head I was going to play. But I wouldn’t have played unless I was cherry ripe, 100 per cent, and at that stage I wasn’t.”
Johns managed just two games for the Knights at the start of the 2007 season before injuries forced him into retirement at the age of 32.
Treading the emotional line
His playing days were over but Johns walked straight into a plum job with Nine as a full-time TV pundit.
He found working on Knights games tough. But when Origin time came, Joey struggled to control himself.
Andrew Johns reacts to a bombed NSW Blues try. Nine
He was told to hold nothing back behind the microphone, but admits he often had to catch himself.
“Everyone can see how passionate I am, and I don’t apologise to show what it means,” he explains.
“I look back at Fatty (Queensland great turned TV commentator Paul Vautin) when he was commentating. It’s part of the theatre.
“You look at some of the footage (of me commentating), you get so caught up in it.
“When Bradman Best scores, when he runs down that sideline, I’m actually not commentating. I’m a fan at the ground.
“So sometimes I’ve got to check myself and go ‘I’m on air here, (I’ve got to) pull my head in’.”
The Best try Johns references happened in the 65th minute of the 2024 series decider, when the Blues trailed 4-2 before Jarome Luai broke the Queensland line and then barnstorming centre Best palmed off a couple of defenders to find the line.
NSW won that game 14-4 to pinch the shield.
And while Johns wanted to jump up and down and scream in celebration that night, there’s been plenty of times he’s felt like smashing his headset in frustration and anger.
‘NSW just don’t get Origin’
The Blues have a habit of losing games, and series, that they are expected to win.
Game one of the 2023 series was played at Adelaide Oval, and NSW led 18-16 until the 74th minute, when Maroons five-eighth Cameron Munster skipped left and sent his teammate Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow down the sideline to score.
“Mate, it broke me,” Johns recalls.
“It was such a fine line, because after that it was so hard (to commentate) for the rest of the game.
“They are the ones that hurt, when the game is won… but then (Queensland) somehow find a way to win.”
Johns held it together that night but the veneer cracked when Queensland won game two at Suncorp Stadium a couple of weeks later.
He was visibly seething post-match when he appeared on Nine’s coverage to dissect the game alongside Vautin and Cameron Smith.
“Now we have to listen to all the bullshit youse go on with for the next 12 months… it drives you mad,” Johns said on TV.
Three years after the fact, Joey explains he had no issue with Vautin or Smith that night, but his passion as a diehard Blues fan simply overruled his on-air training.
“I threw the toys out of the cot,” he says with a smile.
“It’s just hard for me. It’s hard to step away from because it means so much.
“I wasn’t filthy with Cameron, I was just filthy in general. More with the public, that we would have to hear, ‘you just don’t get Origin, it means more to us’ – what a crock of shit.”
Johns isn’t the only New South Welshmen who has become fed up with Queensland’s claim the Blues “don’t get Origin”.
Wally Lewis and Andrew Johns. nna\lachlan.harper
He says his passion for the interstate rivalry is ingrained from childhood, and he believes it will never dissipate.
“I think because I’m a rugby league fanatic and I just grew up watching and loving the Blues. I grew up watching (Queensland icon) Wally Lewis being Wally. NSW would look like winning and then Wally would pull something out of the fire,” he says.
“I remember going to bed that night just hating Wally, like everyone in NSW.
“It will always be there. It will be there until I’m six foot under, and I don’t apologise for that.”
Commentating alongside cane toads
The Nine commentary box is packed full of former State of Origin players from both sides of the Tweed.
Blues legends Johns, Brad Fittler, Paul Gallen, and Phil Gould sit side by side with the likes of Smith, Johnathan Thurston, Billy Slater, and sometimes still Vautin.
Johns has no issue with any of them… at least until Vautin gets too chirpy.
“I’ve got so much respect for them,” he says.
“Fatty was great to work with, Cameron is the greatest player I’ve seen, Thurston I’ve got so much respect for, we are really tight off the field; Billy Slater is the greatest fullback I’ve ever seen. So there is that mutual respect.
“But there are times I wish they’d shut their mouth… but they are pretty cool with it. Fatty used to get pretty lippy, but that’s Fatty. You can’t dislike Fatty.”
Andrew Johns of the Blues celebrates a try in 2005. nna\lachlan.harper
His Blues jersey has been hanging in the pool room for 20 years now but Johns still gets anxious at this time of year.
“Yeah, it’s horrible. Even a week out, two weeks out I start to get butterflies in my stomach. Because it means so much, for myself and ex players who have been there. It’s that feeling of being helpless.
“In your own head you think ‘I would love to be still out there’. But I’m 52, I’m an old man now.”
Old man or not, there are many Blues fans who would still love to see the eighth Immortal on the other side of the sideline one more time.