"Give me one pre-season and I'll show you what I can do. By March I know you'll be happy with my work rate. You won't be sorry."

So ended Johnson's third and most serious interview with the Giants.

Leon Cameron was sold. The coach and his team were looking for an experienced forward to work with their young group of forwards but had harboured doubts about whether the former premiership star was still capable and whether he would fit in to the new club.

"I wasn't sure he wanted to do the hard yards," said Cameron.

And Johnson? "It's no secret how much I love the game. I've loved it all my life and I take great joy out of working with these kids, with all young kids. I was impressed by the coach and I liked the look of the club.

"It gets a bad rap. It's not that far from town and it's a real football club, not unlike Geelong in a way without the external attention. When I arrived I've never seen a ball buzz around a training session like it does here. The contested situations at training are pretty incredible, too.

"The intensity of these guys ... they might be young but I think some of them have been built to experience finals pressure."

It was Johnson's passion and self-belief that convinced Cameron but even his most optimistic expectations have been exceeded. "At best I thought we'd get 15 games out of him," said the coach, "and that we would manage him through and he would work well in other match-day roles.

"I probably didn't think we'd get more than 20 games and 40-plus goals. He's performed 15 to 20 per cent better than I thought he would."

Johnson will be by some stretch the oldest player representing the Giants – he is 17 months older than Joel Patfull, who plays a similar, if less noticed, role at the other end of the ground – in their historic first final at ANZ Stadium against the highly favoured Sydney.

The clash marks his 24th final and is something of a triumph of his self-admitted love affair with the game over the realities of his body and what his former bosses at Geelong recall as his often-challenging personality.

His manager Craig Kelly sets great store in Johnson's determination to prove people wrong. Just as he seethed and fumed during his lengthy early-season suspension in 2007 – in a final straw after a series of antics, Johnson had badly damaged his foot after jumping from a roof during a big night over the summer – and then burst back and ultimately won that year's Norm Smith Medal; now he has battled through the pain barrier and his old club's rejection to star for Greater Western Sydney.

His former football boss at Geelong Neil Balme points to his toughness and his unwavering self-belief. "He's a challenging guy," said Balme.

"He's hard to manage because he's so sure of himself and he tests the environment but he's so tough."

In a previous incarnation as Collingwood's football boss Balme said the Magpies strongly considered but rejected Johnson as a potential trade at the end of 2006. "Both his ankles and his knee were knackered," said Balme. "But he plays through injuries like few I've ever seen."

Years later, after the 2011 flag, Balme recalled that Collingwood overture with the player and commented to him that had Johnson gone to the Magpies he would not have played in three premierships. "I'm not so sure about that," Johnson responded.

The seed that was Greater Western Sydney was first planted in Johnson's mind late one night in October 2014 when the then Geelong champion was dragged from a nightclub in the US to take a telephone call from his manager "Ned" Kelly.

It was shortly before midnight and Johnson was midway through a post-season golfing tour with Brendon Goddard organised by Kelly's organisation.

"Stevie do you want to go to GWS?" Asked Kelly, who had just ended a conversation with Giants boss Dave Matthews, who in turn was prepared to offer two high draft picks for Johnson less than 48 hours before the end of the trade period.

"Ned," said a stunned Johnson to his manager, "I can't do this here. It's too late." Wife Erin was back in Geelong nursing the couple's new baby and Johnson and Kelly agreed that the timing was against them.

There was fallout from the Matthews offer, which was first thrown in during negotiations over Ryan Griffen and then turned serious when the Giants boss called Kelly. It was essentially a captain's – or chief executive's – pick. This frustrated then GWS list manager Stephen Silvagni, who later quit the club privately citing occasional interference as one of the reasons.

Ten months later it seemed that the time had come for Johnson, then 32. The combined perils of age, a pre-season punctuated by injury and then the creeping threat of complacency saw the Geelong hierarchy and Johnson's senior teammates reluctantly, but with some conviction, make the call on his decorated, eventful and highly entertaining 253-game career.

"When you get a tap on the shoulder that your time's finished up at the club you've been at for so long, it takes a few weeks to get your head around that," said Johnson, who added he could not have believed during that dark time that he would be playing finals a year later.

"No I couldn't," he said. "I remember I sat up in the stands with Jonathan Brown on grand final day last year ... I was behind the glass having a few beers watching the game and thinking 'well that's it'.

"But I did think that I could bounce back from a poor season. I'd had my worst pre-season in eight or nine years and I felt I had plenty of footy left in me."

When the Giants finally consummated – at a significantly reduced cost – their love affair with Johnson, it came after the three interviews with Cameron, who at one point told Johnson that he had no interest in "a player at the back end of his career just barking instructions around the forward line".

Cameron stressed to Johnson that he wanted a forward who could kick goals and contribute with the on-field and off-field mentoring role a bonus.

"He's maligned at times," said Cameron. "Opposition supporters, they like to hate the stars and at times he'll have a shot and miss but his strength is that he doesn't get hijacked. Young players ... you can lose them for a quarter or so. If something doesn't work with Steve he just keeps chipping away and he organises them to do the some.

"If it doesn't work, he just moves on."

The older player admitted: "I certainly take great satisfaction watching Devon Smith and Toby Greene. There were bad raps on Toby and he's come from a long way back but he's going to be a very powerful midfielder. And the way [Jonathon] Patton's come back from a serious knee injury."

The general overseeing that group along with Jeremy Cameron, Johnson's September advice to them before the quartet's first AFL final was simple. "Don't place any higher expectations on yourself personally. Just play your role and we can continue doing what we've been doing."

Both Johnson and the club remain unsure about the future. Richmond are one of at least two Melbourne clubs who have offered him an assistant coaching role next year and he has an option to remain at GWS and coach. But the likelihood is that he will only remain at the Giants if he plays on.

Six weeks ago, as the physical demands began to take their toll, retirement for him perhaps beckoned but now it is spring and Johnson and the club remain undecided but open to discussions regarding another one-year contract post their first finals campaign.

Johnson and his family are renting a house in Drummoyne in Sydney's inner west and he owns a house in Melbourne's leafy Canterbury. On the upside he loves the Sydney weather and for the first time he can remember has not been sick all year. On the downside he has been genuinely surprised by the higher cost of living in Sydney.

If Johnson appears and behaves at times like more of a '70s footballer – one senior AFL boss affectionately likened him to a shearer who worked and played hard all week before lining up each Saturday with his local club and kicking 10 – he has had to overcome some other old-fashioned values at the five-year-old Giants.

He lauds the welcoming nature of the Giants home base but admits to some amazement at just how open GWS is as a club compared with what he was used to. "It's a very engaging club," said Johnson, "and they open themselves up more than at Geelong.

"At Geelong, it was a closed shop. You wouldn't have people walking through and the excursions we have here and people allowed into meetings. I shake my head at times at the things that are said in public to engage our new supporters."

Cameron had warned Johnson: "It's going to be a bit different here to what you're used to. And what creates the point of difference is whether you buy into it or not." The coach added: "I've learned to grow with that and I think he has, too. Whether he's here next year or coaching in Melbourne he can see why we are so open and what we are trying to build.

"If we get 60,000 to a Swans-Giants final," said Cameron, "and even 30 or 50 of those people come to the game because of something he's done to tell our story then it's worthwhile. I'm really proud of the way he – like all the older guys Mumford and Griffen and Heath Shaw and Joel Patfull – has bought into it."