“They want kids playing like robots. It’s all about completing sets, kicking long, not making errors. If you look at Johnathan Thurston, look at myself, look at Nathan Cleary; have a look when we were 19, 20. The way we were playing at 29 or 30, it’s light years away. You gotta let kids play.” Brad Fittler, another legendary half now analysing the game alongside Johns at Channel Nine, draws parallels with another football code. “There’s a really good documentary on learning that I saw on soccer and it showed the difference between American and Brazilian soccer,” Fittler says. “So when fans sit there and watch Brazilian soccer, they talk about control and space. In America, they tell the kids where to pass the ball, what to do constantly. You don’t learn and it’s very much like what’s happening now from juniors upwards is they’re constantly told what to do, which hole to run, where to do it, how to do it, where to kick, instead of just allowing it to happen naturally over time.” The result is a generation of halves who, with a handful of exceptions, lack the instinctive brilliance that defined their predecessors. “As a halfback, you learn your biggest lessons on the field. You learn when you make mistakes,” Johns says. “How long since you’ve seen a halfback chip and chase? It doesn’t happen any more.”