Matty Johns has revealed the time he broke protocol with his Newcastle teammates and was drinking on the hill at a game before he got the call up for first grade.

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“I remember being an Under 21s player and ‘Macca’, the late Allan McMahon, he was a really intimidating coach,” Johns told The Matty Johns Podcast.

“The one thing Macca did when he built the Knights, he built a great club culture.

“Under 21s was always at 12 o’clock, 1:30pm was reserve grade and 3 o’clock first grade.

“He had a couple of rules. Number one was if you’re playing 21s or reserve grade, you stick around until the team song’s done at full-time, you don’t leave the ground and go home or anywhere else. Number two was you do not drink. You don’t drink until the first grade game is over in solidarity for the first-graders.

“That worked well for us 21s until about two-thirds of the way through the year.

“We played Manly and we had a big win. All the boys were cock-a-hoop. Everyone’s like let’s have a beer. There were 30,000 at the ground so I said ‘sweet, let’s go over to the hill, no one will see us there’.

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“We put our going out clothes on and we go over to the hill in disguise. We’re halfway through the reserve grade game and I’ve had four or five beers and I hear over the loudspeaker ‘will Matthew Johns please make your way to the Knights dressing room’. I’m going ‘oh no, I’ve been caught and dobbed in’.

“I make my way over there and I’m sort of half-skinned. Macca’s waiting for me.

“Macca goes ‘we’ve got a few injury concerns with Steve Fulmer, he’s hurt himself in the reserve grade. I was going to put him on the bench but he’s hurt himself. I need you to sit on the bench for first grade’.

“I’m going f***. He looks at me and he goes ‘have you been drinking?’ My brain’s scrambling and I go ‘no, I haven’t been drinking, I don’t drink alcohol’. He goes, ‘right, okay’.

“I go dress up and I’m in the gear sitting on the bench … anyway, I don’t get on. But for the next six months I put up with facade around Macca that I don’t drink.

“About six months later we’re at the Cricketers Arms after a game and I’ve got a beer in my hand. Allan McMahon walks up to me and goes ‘oi, I didn’t think you drank’. I said ‘oh, I’ve just taken it up’. He goes ‘good, I don’t trust people who don’t drink’.”