"It looked worse than it probably was," said the Bulldogs captain. "So I was able to, you know, just gather my thoughts and get off the ground for few minutes. I was back on within four minutes."
Johnson literally took that blow on the chin, and played out the game. Blindsided by Mattner, he's better prepared for questions about the 1997 and 1998 preliminary finals, the most recent occasions when his club failed to win a grand final berth.
Veterans Chris Grant, Luke Darcy and Rohan Smith have shuffled off their football coils. Scott West has lost his battle of wounded knee, leaving Johnno as the only survivor from those Dog day afternoons.
"I'm aware of that," he said, breaking into that famously wide Johnson grin, a club monument that rivals the statue of E.J. Whitten and the Doug Hawkins wing. "Thanks for reminding me. That shows my age more than anything."
Johnson's recall of 1997, which the Dogs lost to Adelaide by two points, is better than his remembrance of '98, when the Dogs were flogged by the Crows. "(In) '98, we were never in from the start — they got the jump on us early."
The '97 preliminary final now occupies the same place in club lore that the '89 grand final filled in Geelong's closet, the preliminary version of the various grand finals losses that haunt Collingwood. It's the one that got away, paradise lost.
Johnson remembers that the Dogs were "20-odd points" ahead at three-quarter-time, and "it slipped away". He doesn't bother with the grisly detail, such as the various missed chances by the Doggies, including the near-goal that Tony Liberatore celebrated.
Johnson, as the solitary survivor of that bitter campaigns against the Crows, has been talking to his less-seasoned teammates (i.e., nearly all of them) about grasping their opportunity tonight.
"I suppose, 10 years on, (the) determination and drive is obviously still there, but it's passing that knowledge through to the younger guys and saying, 'Well, the opportunity's there, grab that opportunity because it may be 10 years down the track and you may be talking about something that …'." No need to finish the sentence. He didn't see another prelim for a decade.
"That sort of stuff has obviously been spoken about, and yeah, I'm not going to go into the finer details of what I spoke to the group about, but … they understand that, you know; we've got guys here, Rob Murphy and Mitch Hahn, that have played one final in nine years. So they know what it's about as well. They know that the opportunities don't come that often as well."
How many opportunities to play in a grand final will come Johnson's way?
Questions about his future — how long does he plan to play on, does he want the captaincy? — don't quite jolt him like the Mattner-Craig Bolton sandwich of last week, but one senses that it's not a topic Johnno, despite the chuckles and smiles, wants to spend too much time on.
In part, that's because his team is about to play for grand final, and as captain, he doesn't want the focus to be on him and his future.
He has been contracted for 2009 but expressed a hope that, depending on how he fared next year, he might play "hopefully maybe one more". "We'll see what comes from next year. I'm certainly very comfortable with taking it one year at a time. Obviously, it depends on a lot of things … I've certainly put no end point."
Chris Grant suggested in round one, after Johnson's victorious 300th game, that Johnno could play 400 games.
But, after marvellous seasons of ageless football, the 32-year-old showed signs of decline this season. He accepted that he wasn't quite as good, while arguing that he can maintain very high standards in 2009, noting how Matthew Richardson rebounded in 2008.
"I agree this year that certainly … my levels, compared to probably the previous two years, they haven't dropped a lot. But in saying that, certainly the defensive side of my game has probably picked up a lot more than what it had been the previous two years and that was something I desperately needed to work on … and as a leader.
"I suppose this year, I've probably had more battles with my body than what I've had my whole career. So in saying that, I'm quite confident that obviously for the next couple of weeks, with a bit of luck and obviously to get things right over the pre-season, then I can hit things going flat-out again next year."
Johnson also wants the captaincy for 2009, a decision that rests with Rodney Eade and the club board. "I'd like to do it for probably one more year and then see after that. But the timing's got to be right, too. There are guys waiting to take on that opportunity."
Like the opportunity to play in a grand final. They mightn't get another one.
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