They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and, for the most part, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean an old dog forgets the tricks he’s learned along the way: Just look at Shaun Johnson.

Through seven rounds, the Warriors have been the surprise packet of the 2023 NRL season and, for a team who were discounted back in the pre-season, they’ve now been making noise for long enough for it to feel like more than a flash in the pan.

Theirs is a triumph of rejuvenation and rebirth, and — despite the many success stories around the club this year — nobody sums it up like Johnson, who could come full circle when his side plays the Storm in Melbourne on Anzac Day.

Taking on the purple winning machine is a challenge that Johnson and the Warriors know well, and one they’ve failed plenty of times.

The Storm haven’t lost to the Warriors in eight years and the Kiwi club hasn’t beaten them in Melbourne in nine years.

They have done it though, a long time ago, when Johnson was just a kid.

It was the 2011 preliminary final and, in his 15th NRL game, Johnson was magnificent. If you haven’t watched the try he set up for Lewis Brown later on, then treat yourself. It’s probably been a while.

Johnson used to do things like that a lot and, when he did, it was for joy and sorrow. On the one hand, there was nobody else in the sport who could do what he did. On the other hand, why didn’t he do it more often?

That balance is a tricky one for the mercurial playmaker to walk and Johnson tripped over it more than once.

Who among us has not shook their heads in frustration at another Warriors loss and not muttered what might have been if only he ran the ball a bit more? What if he took control a little more? What if he took those steps and those long passes, and that perennially underrated kicking game, and really got a handle on them?

He could do so much, but because he could do so much we always wanted more. It’s the rugby league equivalent of your favourite worst nightmare.

The Warriors floundered in those years, as they have often, but even then it was clear that Johnson had the juice. When he played Test football and was, for the most part, surrounded by a better calibre of teammates than he was at club level, there were times he looked like the best player in the world.

Johnson isn’t that old way anymore. A shocking ankle injury in 2015 was the end of him as one kind of a player and the start of him as another: He became more controlling, more cerebral, more adept at running a team around the park than running someone ragged.

Sometimes this was to his detriment, because he could still take on the line with a destructive joy, but it just didn’t happen as much as it used to, so it was like putting a bird in a cage to hear it sing.

In becoming what others demanded he should be, something beautiful was lost.

There were good years and bad ones for Johnson. He played finals football again, with the Warriors in 2018 and with the Sharks the following year.

His exile from New Zealand was difficult to understand at the time and even harder to parse now and while he eventually returned, his first season back in Auckland was an unhappy one: More than once, he faced calls to retire.

However, that all seems long ago now because, at 32, and almost a season and a half into his Warriors homecoming, that Johnson has reached his final form. It is not his most devastating, but it might be his most effective.