BIG GOALS: Warriors playmaker Shaun Johnson won the golden boot last year as rugby league's best player but says he's nowhere near his best yet.

Don't say it. Do not say a word.



Don't say he's "arrived". Don't say he's "come of age". Don't say he's "the best player in the world" on account of the Golden Boot award presented to him late last year.



Do not even say it - because Shaun Johnson isn't buying it.



"I personally don't believe I am the best player in the world," the Warriors halfback says pragmatically. "I can understand why I was given that award, through my performances at an international level. But I don't think I'm the complete player and that I have arrived and there's nothing left for me to do."



Or come of age?



"Maybe this year I will a bit," he continues. "Maybe over the off-season, I have a bit. Maybe in the Four Nations, I did a little bit. But I don't think I am anywhere near my best. I don't want to be the player who just had a good Four Nations. You'd be in danger of being that player if you thought you were the best player in the world because you won a Golden Boot."

Well, that's a relief.

Players can say awards and accolades don't change them, but they often do. It's easier to read your own press than ignore it.



After Jarryd Hayne won the Dally M in 2009, he sometimes referred to himself as "The Medallist" and then drifted in and out of form in the seasons that followed. Ben Barba was similarly crowned in 2012, and then flamed out before the following season even started.



Here, on this sunny Auckland morning at Mount Smart Stadium, Johnson appears to have his ego in check, despite the growing number of fans who shout his name in the street, or stop him in the supermarket, or the pack of schoolgirls who start screeching whenever they spy him, ready to pounce with mobile phones.



He was judged the best player in the world following his imposing performances in last November's Four Nations, which New Zealand claimed after humbling the Kangaroos in the final.



That he was given the prestigious award ahead of the likes of Hayne, Sam Burgess and James Graham raised questions about its legitimacy, not least because Johnson's side had failed to reach the finals.

Getty Images SUPER STEP: Kiwis halfback Shaun Johnson steps around Kangaroos opposite Cooper Cronk during last year's Four Nations decider in Wellington.

"It's an embarrassment that he can be judged the best player in the world," says one stunned former international.



On this day, construction workers are clunking away at one end of the stadium, erecting a huge stage. The Foo Fighters will be playing here later in the week.



The 24-year-old halfback doesn't consider himself a rockstar, and the fact the Warriors are a team that has promised so much but delivered so little on his watch is the reason.



"I just think if you halfback of the side you have a big influence on the way you win or lose," Johnson explains.



"We've had our fair share of losses since I've been at the club. It doesn't sit right with me. We played some good footy last year and I played some really good footy last year, but I also played some bad footy. You get awarded a Golden Boot and a lot of people forget that.

"I had an okay year last year. We didn't make the eight, but I finished it off well with the Kiwis. I'm under no illusions that we've had disappointment at this club and if we're going to change that I'm going to have to play a big role in that."

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You haven't made it, baby, until you've made it on YouTube. On that score, Johnson is a phenomenon.



While researching this story, Phil Gould insisted I look at the highlights package of Johnson playing touch football from 2007-08. "Try to put into words what he's doing," the Panthers boss said, laying down the challenge.



Simply, you cannot.

GetShotted Future star: Before he became a household name, Warriors halfback Shaun Johnson wowed spectators with his silky skills on the touch rugby field.

The four-minute clip shows shaky footage of Johnson stepping off both feet, ducking, weaving, throwing long balls to unmarked wingers. They are precisely the same moves and contortions that prompted Kangaroos coach Tim Sheens to lament "Johnson had spiders on him tonight" after the Four Nations final.



Ask Johnson to explain his footwork and he grins at the absurdity of the question.



"It's instinct. It's a feel. Nobody can talk about a step or explain it and justify what I was thinking. It happens like that. It's a blur. It's a feel … People ask me about the Wembley one in the semi-final."



He's referring to the Kiwis' clash against England at the World Cup in 2013, when he scored with 20 seconds to go and then landed the match-winning conversion after the siren.



"Can't tell you what happened. If I sit here in this seat and think exactly about what happened, I just remember getting a high ball and getting rushed. But I didn't see the person. I couldn't tell you who it was. It was a feel. It was catch [avoiding the England defender] and then I stepped. I was just running to score, and then someone came, so what do you do?"

Johnson stepped inside the fullback.

"It's … You just do it."

Lawrence Smith/Fairfax NZ KEY MAN: The Warriors will look to Shaun Johnson to spearhead their attack in 2015.

The YouTube clip is the reason Johnson is at the Warriors.



He'd slipped under the recruitment club's radar but then a family friend sent the link to Tony Iro, the former Kiwi international and under-20s coach at the time, and then everything changed.



"I watched it and got him in the next day," Iro, who has rejoined the club this season after two years at the New Zealand Rugby League, recalls.



"He was super quick, had an ability to step off both feet, but what I really liked about it is that he had an eye for a pass that hit the mark. All the flashy stuff you always notice it, but he could pick out a guy who was open and free and hit a chest every time."



Johnson also remembers that phone call from Iro.



"I just flipped," he says. "We'd like you to come in and have a go with our development squad. I f..king flipped."



Johnson played an array of sports as a teenager, from touch to New Zealand's dominant code of rugby union to some Australian Rules football.



But whatever you do, do not tell him he was just a touch player who became a rugby league player.

"It's an easy comment for journos and commentators to make," he says.

"Yeah, he was," Vatuvei continues. "Ask anyone and he was when he got here. He's growing into a man. He's putting his body on the line now. That's something he had to work on. He had all the skills, but all the hard stuff is what he had to work on."

Playmakers don't normally talk about their deficiencies, let alone allow someone else point them out. But Johnson doesn't hide from his stature, because it's always been an issue.



"Over here, we play an open grade," he says. "I was playing under nines, all the grades have an open weight division. Our team, the little Hibiscus Coast Raiders, we were pushing shit up the hill every week. I was the smallest bloke on the field. Even look back at my team photos. Even look back at my driver's license when I was 16, and I look nothing like it.



"I was tiny when I first came here [to the Warriors]. It's taken a lot of work to actually feel comfortable that you can throw yourself into something. When you've been the smallest and weakest person on the field, it's going to take time. I've had enough time now.



"And I guess it's all helped me to become what I am right now. I'm blessed that I have attributes that other players don't: the speed and the step."



In many respects, it happened too early for Johnson.

He made his NRL debut in Round 13 of 2011, and then helped guide his side to the grand final, including a hypnotic performance against the Storm in the preliminary final.

Photosport LEADER: Shaun Johnson, who captained the Warriors at this year's Auckland Nines, addresses his troops.

"I was just so raw then. People learn to defend you, and they learn you. You realise there's more to the game than just sitting back and waiting for the big moment. You need to be in the game … just always learning there's so much more. There's so much more on every decision you make. There's more riding on everything."



Australian fans recall the Four Nations final, but others remember the Kiwis' narrow win over Samoa as a defining moment in Johnson's development.



The Kiwis needed two tries in the final 20 minutes. Having struggled earlier in the match, Johnson stepped up when it mattered.



"Samoa was a big step for me," he says. "A very big step, actually. All last year I did a lot of work with our coaching staff about being that player who can come up with that play at that right time. Be that player that steps up and is in the moment when you need to be in the moment.

"I'd played poorly that day against Samoa. They were determined to beat us. They almost had us, really. Back in that game, I was involved in two plays - they weren't massive, entertaining plays, but they were plays that needed someone to do.



"For me, personally, that was a lot bigger than the game when I had spiders on me. It was showing myself that I could do it."



Says Iro: "To me, that showed how far he'd come as a player. A few years earlier, he might never have come up with a performance that dragged his team out of the fire. He showed his maturity."



The best are always in a hurry, but the best halfback the game has seen knows it takes time. Andrew Johns has routinely said ball players don't mature until their late 20's. He's had the same conversation with Johnson.



"I haven't read too much into it," he says of the advice from Johns. "I think to myself, 'Why can't I do it now? Why wait two years before I come of age or I start seeing the game in a different light? Why not apply myself and look to learn every day so I can be that player this year?'"

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Phil Walter KIWI AS: Former Kiwis skipper Benji Marshall and compatriot Shaun Johnson have a laugh at the NRL's 2015 season launch in Auckland.

Before we started talking on this day, Johnson had some work to do. He completed a tough contact session, then dragged a bag of footballs to one end of the ground.

As he practiced kicks at goal, a stocky assistant coach was behind the posts, kicking the balls back to him.

Oh, hang on … That's Stacey Jones, New Zealand rugby league legend.

Photosport MAGIC JOHNSON: Rival NRL players admit Shaun Johnson can be hard to defend because they never know what he's going to do next.

"So Stacey Jones, my idol growing up, and now we're having bets on who buys coffee on my goal kicks," laughs Johnson. "He's kicking balls back to me."

Jones, 38, retired at the end of 2009 but his presence is writ large everywhere you look at Mount Smart.

He was an entirely different player to Johnson, but comparisons are easily drawn about their importance.

"The difference between us," Jones says, "Is that I hope he can be the one who leads the Warriors to their first premiership. He's the ideal guy who can lead us there."

Says Johnson: "It's always our year apparently. People are quick to say it's going to be the Warriors year. Like myself, there's still a lot of work to go."

But he can also allow himself time to reflect. Johnson grew up in Whangaparaoa, 35 minutes on the motorway north from here. He was raised by his father, as one of four boys.

Amid all the rubbish headlines rugby league has recently attracted, his story on the eve of the season is a timely reminder that before players became rockstars they were ambitious youngsters with stars in their eyes.

"When I was growing up, I always wanted to play league and I always wanted to play for the Warriors," he says. "I never wanted to play with the Melbourne Storm. It was always the Warriors. It was never the All Blacks. It was the Warriors."

Why?

"I don't know. I loved rugby league and that's what I played. I wasn't special. I wasn't anything. I was good at sport, but I had the same dreams that others kids have. If you're asking me to reflect on it, it's just buzzy that a dream can come true.

"To be sitting here, bro, it's unreal. Work hard and it is possible."