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.
Going into Round 8, Johnson was equal first in the league for try assists and equal second in the league for line break assists.
He uses his running to set up his passing and, if the defence doesn't pay respect, he'll still find a bit of the old heat with ball in hand.
Twice this season — against the Bulldogs and the Sharks — he's provided the winning score in the dying minutes to deliver his team victory.
The win over North Queensland last week was not pretty nor perfect.
The Warriors dropped a lot of ball and some of the errors would have had coach Andrew Webster thinking of his Connecticut days.
However, they found their resolve when it counted and, once they did hang on to the Steeden, they knew exactly where to go and what to do, a clarity of purpose gifted to them by Johnson, the direction and command he provided.
He still has the golden touch, but now he can take everybody where they need to go.
In a way, it should not surprise. What Johnson is doing, and what he's become, has happened before to players just like him.
Stacey Jones played some of his best football for New Zealand once he slowed down in the mid-2000s, because the game slowed down for him as well.
Benji Marshall first saved and then extended his career for years and years because he found that same understanding.
For an example in another sport, look no further than Quade Cooper, who resurrected his Wallabies career on the back of finding method to mix with his play-making madness.
Johnson — like Jones, Marshall and Cooper — came to this place after living an entire footballing life, where they underwent hundreds of games and thousands of plays.
They climbed the mountain and found the wisdom. Their minds caught up with the rest of them, even as the rest of them was still fast enough to stop anybody taking them lightly.
If what has been happening for Johnson and the Warriors continues, this could be for him what the 2005 Tri Nations was for Jones, or the Rabbitohs season was for Marshall, or the 2021 Wallabies recall was for Cooper.
How far Johnson and the Warriors can go remains to be seen. Their match against Melbourne is their entrance to Thunderdome: They'll play the Roosters and the Panthers in the weeks to come and, after that, we'll know exactly what they're about.
Here, so close to the end of Johnson's career, we might really have the start of something.
Johnson can't slip away from defenders like he did in 2011, and he can't spin around like a top and inexplicably end up going the right way anymore.
However, he doesn't need to do it that way anymore. He knows exactly where he's going. He's been that way enough times to get it.
