SOME of Steve Johnson's earliest chatter was about footy. His father Terry told me that. They'd drive down from Wangaratta to watch Collingwood — the whole family was Collingwood — and he'd sit with his parents, not moving. This was from the time when Steve was two-and-a-half.

Other kids whinge to go home or ask for a pie. He just sat and watched. His hero was Peter Daicos. Going home in the car, they'd talk. "He could re-live every moment of Daicos' game."

Steve Johnson is Daicos with a funny hip. I say to his father, "He's flat-footed, isn't he?", and he says, no. They were told soon after his birth there was a problem. Turned out to be with his hip. He sort of waddles but he does it with speed and balance. The first sign of a good Australian footballer is that he doesn't lose his feet. Steve Johnson hardly, if ever, loses his feet.

Seems sport was his whole world as a kid. The family would go by car the seven kilometres from their home near the golf course into Wangaratta. Steve would run in and out. His father remembers his first game of footy. His older brother was playing under nines. He was six. Each week, he would turn up in his gear, hoping for a run. Eventually, the day came when the team was a player short. Right, said the coach. You're on. "He came on, swooped on the ball, weaved and kicked a goal."

He would spend hours kicking the footy with other kids. His father used to watch him. From the start, he kicked left foot, right foot, snapshots, all different angles. In the summer months, he'd hit a golf ball with a cricket stump against a brick wall. In cricket, he was a wicketkeeper. His specialty was hitting the stumps from any angle even when he was 20 metres from the wicket.

It's taken me the whole year to properly appreciate Johnson. The first person to tell me to watch him was fellow Age columnist John Harms. That was several years ago. I watched and saw an opportunist capable of the odd clever act. Now I see a player who is one of Geelong's constants. Johnson once said he's always played the game his own way. He still does and it makes him difficult to cover. If you see a close-up of him in a game, it's his eyes that are fascinating. Watch them move about as they ride the waves of thought as each moment in the game presents itself as a range of possibilities or problems to be solved.

I thought Collingwood controlled the way last weekend's preliminary final was played. That should not be a surprise. Mick Malthouse has been closing down Geelong for decades. The decisive moment of that match for me came late in the final term when a Collingwood goal made an improbable Magpie victory look likely. The question was who, if anyone, was going to break the pattern of the game apart for Geelong and how was he going to do it?

At the bounce, Johnson bounded in from half-forward, drifted sideways through the pack, arriving on the other side with the ball in front of him, not in his hands but in a place where another Geelong player could take possession. He then broke left, accepting a handpass before cutting to his right, having seen Cameron Mooney on the lead, and hit him with a low buzzing pass. Mooney goaled. The game was tilted back in Geelong's favour.

Johnson is a 2007 All-Australian. He was also nearly drummed out of the game before the season started after he acquired his second conviction for drinking to add to a previous incident where he broke an ankle climbing a fence to get back into a pub that had closed. Johnson's journey since that time is basically the story of the Geelong team.

New captain Tom Harley took a stand. Harley, a former private schoolboy from Adelaide, clearly had ideas about leadership. Johnson got a punishment that shocked everyone, including himself. He was banished. Not even allowed to train with his mates. A big message went out that Geelong was serious this year. The action also meant something could be demanded of the other players. Cameron Mooney would have to stop doing what he calls "the silly little things" that got him reported for rough play four times last year.

Johnson also had to live with the fact that the public now perceived him, in his own words, as a pisshead. It is instructive to go back and read the old blog sites from around that time. Johnson copped heaps from Geelong supporters. He was called a renegade and told he was hopeless. He was described as just "a gifted country footballer" and said to typify the club's "culture of mediocrity".

More than one voice said he'd failed the three-strikes test and wanted him thrown out. There is quite a fashion now for wanting erring souls to be thrown out of the game. Even politicians have joined the chant. I always recall that the person who might be called the founder of the game, Tom Wills, was thrown out of the game for 100 years because he was an alcoholic who played cricket with the blacks and killed himself. He played footy for Geelong, too.

Geelong had shown its ambivalence towards Johnson at the end of 2006, trying to trade him to Essendon and the Pies. Neither club wanted him. It was do-or-die time for him as an AFL player. He started riding a bike 50 or 60 kilometres at a time. He did boxing. He trained with Geelong's VFL players. His father says he set out to enjoy it. "He made some good friendships." He sacrificed five or six kilograms to give him an extra fraction of speed.

Harley said he knew from the moment Johnson reported back to what is now termed "the leadership group" that he was going to make it. Harley has been quoted as saying that Johnson was "humbled". It may be a coincidence but Geelong's form suddenly accelerated in round six against Richmond when it won by 157 points. That was also Johnson's first game back.

John Byrne was involved with Johnson as an under-18 with the Murray Bushrangers. Byrne, who played in four grand finals with the Kangaroos, winning in '77, repeated what other people who knew Johnson in his formative years said about him to me.

"He's a quiet bloke, really. He just had to learn when to pull up stumps and go home."

Byrne never had any doubt that Johnson would find his way, having always seen him as determined. "He'll play well on Saturday," Byrne said. "He'll enjoy it."

Steve Johnson is this column's Tom Wills Footballer of the Year.