Aug 9th, 2017

Aug 9th, 2017

GWS Giants forward Steve Johnson has admitted he would love a fairy tale finish to his career after confirming that this would be his last season in the AFL.

Johnson became the latest high profile player to announce it was time to hang up the boots after fronting a press conference with Giants coach Leon Cameron.

GWS sits second behind Adelaide on the table and is one of the favourites to win the flag this year after making it all the way to the preliminary final last season.

"I would love to finish on a fairy tale but it doesn't always happen," Johnson said.

"What I will do is train and play as hard as I can over the next six weeks, hopefully the body holds up, but I'll certainly be going to the well as many times as I can to prepare myself and give myself the opportunity and the team.

"For me it was just about getting it out of the way so there was no speculation and it's a really important period for this footy club.

"I've had a great journey here so far, it hasn't been long, but we want to have the ultimate success and I would love to be a part of it.

"The focus is to try and finish off as best I can and hopefully we can have that."

Johnson, aka Stevie J, has played 289 games since his debut in 2002 with the bulk of those being for Geelong before he shifted to the Giants last year.

He won three premierships with the Cats, won the Norm Smith medal for the 2007 flag, made three All-Australian teams and twice topped Geelong's goalkicking.

He admitted he had been motivated to make his announcement following the spate of recent retirements in the AFL.

Western Bulldogs' Matthew Boyd, Essendon's Jobe Watson, St Kilda's Nick Riewoldt, and West Coast's Sam Mitchell and Matt Priddis have all recently announced that 2017 will be their last.

"I figured that people were going to start to look my way for obvious reasons," Johnson said.

"For me it was just about clarifying or confirming that this would be my last year.

"Rather than dodge questions for the next six weeks which is going to be really important for the footy club I figured I'd knock it on the head and put my focus towards playing some decent footy towards the end of the year.

"I'll be leaving the game with nothing left in the tank so to some degree that's satisfying."