It was all right there, in glorious low definition, from the very first time we saw Shaun Johnson.

The video of the touch football highlights is so pixelated it's hard to see his face. It's from almost two decades ago, so he's thin as a rail but there is no mistaking him. 

The first highlight plays out in full before the strains of Fort Minor's seminal 2005 hit Remember The Name — the anthem of choice for all footy mixtapes in YouTube's early days — even gets started.

As the hapless defenders try to reach him, Johnson goes once off his left, then twice off his right, then fires a cut out pass to an unmarked teammate who swan dives over in the corner.

Before he's even thrown it, you can hear people yelling his name. Once he does, the crowd loses it. Whoever is holding the camera starts chuckling.

All up, it takes about 12 seconds and even now it tells you just about everything you need to know about Johnson, a player who seems eternally young and full of possibility, even as he's staring down the barrel of his 34th birthday and his NRL retirement.

The clip feels like a universe away from a rain-sodden Brookvale Oval, where Johnson made his return from injury in the Warriors' 24-10 defeat to Manly.

The broadcast was clear enough you could see the lights shining off his all-white mouthguard when he grinned after his first-half try. 

A combination of injuries and improvement of his all-around skill set meant his running game changed long ago — his only carry for the game was when he scored.

It was not a vintage display from Johnson, whose hands let him down more than once, but he seems determined to live as many moments as he can before the end.

He was booed as he left the field at half-time but you couldn't get the grin off his face. He said Brookvale Oval was a great place to play footy and he sounded like he meant it. 

He posed for photos with teammates, opponents and fans alike after the match. He looks like he's at peace with his decision and set on enjoying his career's final days as best he can.

Johnson seems to understand that part of the journey is the end. Perhaps he's the only one who does because even though he is in the veteran class and the ravages of age have begun to show, it is strange to consider the idea of Shaun Johnson retiring.

He has never seemed old, even as the seasons have piled up, and ever since he debuted 14 years ago and helped the Warriors to a rollicking grand final berth, it has always felt like there has been more time — more time to get better teammates around him, more time for him to hone his craft, more time run like the wind blows and create beautiful tries and score a few himself, in whatever way he could, like he did in that old touch footy clip.

But now there are only two games left. The end which never seemed to be coming is upon us.

It's fitting that Johnson had one last clash with Manly's Daly Cherry-Evans before that end. The two are linked together forever after meeting as rookies in that 2011 decider. 

The score on Friday was the exact same as it was 14 years ago and Cherry-Evans, as he always has been, was the more methodical of the two — his kicking game and attacking organisation went a long way to securing Manly's win.

Johnson was always brilliant and had to learn to be methodical, a task he eventually mastered to the point he could manage a game with the best of them. But it was the brilliant things that came easy to Johnson, ever since he was a rookie.

Look back at his play from that season — look at them, don't read about them because words aren't enough — like the long-range try against Brisbane, the incredible assist in the preliminary victory over Melbourne, the fearless display in the grand final where he resurrected his side by putting on two tries in the space of a couple of minutes to give them hope of a miracle. 

This is a player who could fly before he could walk and that made for some hard landings over the years, but when he soared there was nothing else like it.

In contrast, Cherry-Evans' methodical style is his substitute for raw brilliance and it makes him the play-making equivalent of an all-terrain vehicle. 

Be it fair weather or foul or in the thunderstorm that hammered Brookvale Oval, Cherry-Evans always knows what the game needs at any particular point and he knows how to deliver it — like the powerful 40/20 he nailed in the first half on Friday night. 

While you can make the case his last two seasons have been among his best, it is hard to pick out exact points in Cherry-Evans' career. The apex is so close to the nadir it's difficult to tell them apart. 

He is a player of remarkable consistency, especially given he plays such a volatile position, and is the closest thing rugby league has to a forever man this side of Cameron Smith.

Johnson's career since that rookie year in 2011 has been far more varied. There have been high times and low, and the speed with which he's bounced between them has been shocking.

He played four finals games in that first season and just four more for the rest of his career. Last year's cathartic victory over the Knights in week two was his first finals victory since that famous prelim over Melbourne 12 years before.

But because there are valleys it makes the peaks stand out more. A rich man doesn't know how to be poor and you can't really understand how good winning feels until you've lost a few times.

The highs of Johnson's career — like the 2014 Four Nations, when he led the Kiwis to a victory in the final in the greatest game of his life, piecing up Cherry-Evans himself and winning the Golden Boot along the way, or last year's glorious renaissance campaign which should have ended with a Dally M victory — are made all the sweeter because of the lows he travelled through on the way.

As for Cherry-Evans, he will keep on winning and more highs may be yet to come. He is 35 now, but Manly will make the finals this season, maybe even the top four, and he could well win the Dally M medal. 

He will play on next season, and probably the season after that, and on and on until he's either had or enough or we reach the end of the world. It's an even-money bet which one will come first. 

But Johnson really is at the end and so we must return to the beginning. Was the promise of that grainy, old clip ever filled?

Johnson has enjoyed a wonderful career and retires as one of the most beloved players of his generation, and while he didn't win a premiership, he did just about everything else.

But really, he could never be what we imagined when we saw that clip, and that's the point. He was a player whose talent meant he existed without limits, which is both a blessing and a curse. When you can do anything, nothing is ever enough. 

Johnson's magic was in the possibilities, to see him move and marvel at what he could do, what he just did and, most tantalisingly of all, what he might do next.

He might have been a player out of a dream but not even our dreams are perfect because there is always the chance, or maybe the hope, that they could become more than they are. 

There was always going to be a ceiling on Johnson. He just had a habit of making us wonder what lay just beyond it. A sceptic might think he fell short of his own limits. A believer would look at how far he came and marvel at what he did along the way.