The day Joey wanted to quit rugby league

Phil Gould has revealed what really went down during that famous conversation with Andrew Johns in State of Origin camp in 2003.

Rugby league fans will vividly remember the photos of Gus talking to a downcast Joey outside a team function ahead of the '03 Origin series.

The conversation came after NSW captain Johns had hit back at coach Gould for criticising the Blues.

Having already achieved everything there was to achieve in the game of rugby league, including Origin and NRL premiership glory, Gould says Johns was ready to give it all away.

“It was really badly misreported at that time, but it was the start of Andrew’s mental challenges of being Andrew Johns and living life in the fish bowl," Gould told League Life on Wednesday night.

“We later learned he had some challenges mentally as well.

“He was at that time struggling with rugby league, struggling with who he was.

“That conversation, I remember we left a team lunch and went across the road to discuss it. When I’d given him a little bit of tough love he said to me well I don’t want to play.

“I said ‘you don’t want to play Origin?’ he said ‘no I don’t want to play football’, and that’s a whole different conversation.”

Johns famously came back from the brink to lead NSW to a 2-1 series victory, playing on for another two years before retiring.

Gould says the 2003 conversation did Johns the world of good.

“It was good because it sparked that reaction that he needed to talk — we talk a lot now about mental health and about people and how they can sometimes get themselves in a dark place ... the pressure these kids are under, the expectation on them is huge,” Gould said.

“Andrew Johns was Andrew Johns, he wasn’t any ordinary sort of footballer.

“It was great because it got him starting to talk about these issues and saying how he really felt about his position in the game."